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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28404612">Dominus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/IViv/pseuds/IViv'>IViv</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Corpo Netrunner V, Cyberpunk 2077 Spoilers, Dirty filthy shameless smut, Eventual Smut, F/M, Heavy Angst, I am in Cyberpunk hell and here to stay, Planned fic, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Specific chapter will be taggged, Suicide thoughts / attempts, everyone deserves a hug, plot heavy, the devil ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:21:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>51,596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28404612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/IViv/pseuds/IViv</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no saving everyone. She can only save herself. </p><p>V wakes again in Tokyo twelve months after she signs away her soul. Goro is with her at long last. They have all the time in the world. Or do they?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Goro Takemura &amp; Female V, Goro Takemura &amp; V, Goro Takemura/Female V, Goro Takemura/V</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>166</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>398</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. ACT I: The Devil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic is planned and outlined. The themes and tone of the work will reflect the source material. Please consider subscribing/bookmarking. I complete all of my posted works.</p><p>Again, a huge thank you to my beta <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a>. She is nothing shy of breathtaking and I couldn't have done this without her.</p><p>Updates will come weekly, most likely on a Sunday.</p><p>p.s. While the utmost care is taken when I write, I am not Japanese and have never visited Japan. Google translate is my best friend. Please excuse (or even better, drop me a comment to let me know) any incorrect customs, slang, and/or social proceedings that may occur in this fic.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At first glance V couldn’t tell what she was looking at. It was white, a shade purer than new snow. Neon lines sliced it at odd intervals. If she concentrated, she could make out a rough texture, like the grain of old films. She looked harder, puzzled when nothing changed. Whatever she was looking at, she had the feeling it was supposed to magnify when she did that.</p><p>She remained still while the world spun around her. There was a tingle at the back of her neck. Something touched her there, or rather, pierced her. Jolts of electricity coursed through the connection. She was warm and nourished, like an embryo in a mother’s womb. Thick liquid clung to her skin. When was the last time had she felt this…secure? Danger was the biggest staple of her world, be it bullets sailing over her head or the latest office fuckery. She fought her whole life, clawed from one trash heap to another. In the end nothing mattered. She died on an operation table like the butt of a bad joke.</p><p>Wait…dead. She was supposed to be <em>dead</em>.</p><p>Everything hit her at once. What she had been staring at was the floor, the neon lines designated paths. How was this possible? Where was she? <em>What</em> was she? Her mother had been dead for twenty-seven years.</p><p>V grunted. No sound came out. There was a tube shoved down her throat. She gagged on it. A stronger jolt of electricity pulsed through the back of her neck. She was jacked into something. She tried to grab it. No use, all her limbs were bound. Her spine was pressed to something hard. She bucked against it. Oxygen flow from the tube increased. Bad move, because she wasn’t prepared to breathe. She gagged harder, eyes watering at the intrusion.</p><p>She was in some sort of tank. From the inside it looked like a dance tube from the Afterlife. She was suspended in fluid. Gushes of it rushed by her, down past her feet. The waterline was dropping. It exposed her face then shoulders and chest. She was being ejected. V squinted to squeeze the fluid from her eyes. She was naked. Despite the circumstances she wasn’t panicking, must be tranquilisers.</p><p>When the tank cleared, the jack was the first to go. With a click, the thick cable scraped past her back and hit the bottom of the tank. She barely felt it. The sensation was too much. She was seeing, hearing, smelling again. The world was so vivid. It was as if her soul had been returned to her body.</p><p>The tube slid from her throat. She choked at the loss of it. Spine support went next. The tiny claws extracted one by one, freeing her from their clutch. Last was the vice around her wrists and ankles. Three men in hazmat suits walked in. They lowered her onto a stretcher and wheeled her out of the room. Save for the tank, there was nothing else inside, but they did not stray from the marked path.</p><p>V stared at the logo on the hazmat suit: a red circle, inside which nested three prongs ending in blunt dots. She had memorised what each dot meant when she wore them on her lapel: security, banking, manufacturing.</p><p>Oh yeah, that was right. She sold her soul to the literal devil.</p><p>Two of the men wheeled her into an adjacent room. The one observing turned to her. “You may experience nausea, prickling in your fingers and toes. If symptoms worsen, I will put you back under again.”</p><p>It took her a while to register the words. Her throat was raw from the tube, her voice grating. She spoke with a strange accent, like she was learning to pronounce the words again. “What year is this?”</p><p>“2078. We are in an Arasaka research facility. I am Dr. Anders Hellman. I don’t suppose you remember me. ”</p><p>A whole year since the assault on Arasaka Tower. <em>Shit</em>. She tried to sit, nothing co-ordinated. She groaned miserably, legs kicking at the padded stretcher.</p><p>Maybe it was because she hadn’t damaged company property. The men ignored her. They cleaned her with a hose, rubbed her front and back like she was a slab of meat, and threw a surgical gown over her.</p><p>“Wait, said your name was Hellman,” V said after she was dried. Of course she remembered him. She had busted the pompous fool out of a Kang-Tao AV. Took knocking out half of Night City’s power and a fucking missile launcher. Lost Scorpion, too.</p><p>“Delayed reaction, disassociation, irritability, though the last one might be liable to the test subject,” Hellman muttered to himself.</p><p>“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”</p><p>“Yes, it’s me. I am the director of the Relic project. Is it so outlandish to see me here? Thanks to you, the Secure Your Soul program is a phenomenal success. Your very existence is proof. An engram in an organic body, the clients won’t tell the difference! Of course, we had to build an inorganic brain to accommodate the engram and graft it into the skull, but those are small de—”</p><p>“Where is he?” V interrupted. When Hellman looked at her strangely, she added: “Goro. Goro Takemura.”</p><p>Hellman stared at her through the face shield of his hazmat suit. His eyes were passive, devoid of emotion, and his brows pulled taunt. “He said you’d ask for him.”</p><p>“Where is he?”</p><p>Hellman sighed. “Your body might be of an adult’s, but remember you were ‘birthed’ mere minutes ago. You have no established immunity. A common cold could kill you. You will not be allowed visitors, not for the foreseeable future.” Hellman nudged his chin at the door. “Come, there are many tests that must be—”</p><p>“I won’t do shit unless I see him first.”</p><p>There was a single person she trusted in Arasaka. It sure wasn’t Hellman. Goro was the only reason she signed the contract, hell, the only reason she didn’t nuke Arasaka HQ herself. V didn’t get up from where she sat on the stretcher. She was weak, newborn, and buck naked under a layer of paper, but she levelled Hellman with a glare that meant business. It was the one she learned as an orphan in tech school, the one she honed in the viper pits of Arasaka counter-intel, and the one she gave him in Sunset Motel.</p><p>“Let me see him, or I will <em>ruin</em> your day.”</p><p>Hellman cursed beneath his breath. After a moment’s hesitation, he caved. He nodded to the other suits. They left without a word. “You give me flashbacks of that nightmare of a city. This way.”</p><p>Her legs were shaky, though she wasn’t about to ask for help. Hellman took the lead while she limped behind. “He has been waiting for over five hours. We told him to go home. Of course, he declined. He demanded to be kept up to date with your progress, hence knowing you were scheduled to wake this month. I don’t know why Hanako-sama is so…lenient with these matters. It’s driving me—” Hellman cleared his throat.</p><p>He signalled to the cameras. Another set of doors opened. “This is the visitor’s room. It’s not supposed to be used until months after. You both are being very difficult.”</p><p>As with the others, the room was equipped with the bare minimum. A desk and two chairs ended the furniture list. They were empty. A large window took up most of the far wall. The glass was blacked out. She walked up to the window, placed her hand on the cold surface.</p><p>The glass flicked to life. It was a smart panel, designed for restricted two-way access. A man stood on the other side, his hand extended. His palm rested against hers, a perfect mirror image.</p><p>Her breath caught in her throat. She had told herself that she wouldn’t cry. It was weakness on a silver platter, totally embarrassing. Despite everything, tears welled in her eyes. She didn’t dare blink, least he be gone when she looked next. She remembered, back on the space station. He had worn black, with a neatly combed top knot and trimmed beard. There was so much pain in his eyes. Despite that they were soft. V could see herself in them. Her reflection, like she was the only thing in the world.</p><p>
  <em>Promise. Promise I will see you again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I promise.</em>
</p><p>“V.” The whisper pulled her from the space station. Goro was leaning closer now. He smiled when he finally caught her attention. V did the same. Her smile was so wide her cheeks hurt. He looked good, all cyberware back online, the gears pristine and churning. In Night City, there had been permanent dark circles under his eyes. Here they vanished without a trace. The skin on his face was smooth, free from the oil and grime of a life on the run. His black suit was freshly pressed. Home had treated him well.</p><p><em>His home</em>. V cursed the voice in her head. For some morbid reason it still sounded like Johnny. <em>You think they’ll accept you here? Don’t be a fucking gonk. You are a stranger in stranger lands. </em></p><p>V pushed the voice to the back of her head. “Goro,” she whispered back.</p><p>The two of them stood there for a while, breath fogging up the glass. “I—I can’t believe it.” She wiped her eyes on her paper gown. “It’s too good to be true.”</p><p>“I keep my promises,” Goro said in that gruff voice of his that she found so damn charming.</p><p>“Been busy?”</p><p>Goro nodded then shook his head. “How are you feeling?”</p><p>V clasped a hand over her mouth. She had a million things to say to him. Where does she begin? <em>I’ve just been spat from a birth machine. I lost all my chrome. My cyberdeck is dust. Everything I’ve built, everything I am is gone. My friends think I’ve betrayed them. I missed you. Oh god, I’ve missed you so, so much.</em></p><p>She traced her fingers down the glass. She wanted to scan him, make sure everything beneath the surface was equally sound. Then she remembered that her Kiroshi MK.3 optics had been the first to go. There was no jack on her wrist neither, only a freakishly large one in the back of her neck. She never installed a neck port in her old body. She’d burned hundreds of runners while they were plugged hard into the net.</p><p>The tranquilisers must be wearing off. Her heart hammered against her ribcage. Was this delayed reaction from the birth? V rubbed the empty spot on her wrist. No jack, no optics, no chrome, only a port controlled by Arasaka.</p><p><em>Company property</em>.</p><p>“V, are you alright?” Goro asked. His brows knitted. Even the chrome lines on his face shone with polish. V suddenly noticed her reflection in the glass. She didn’t recognise herself. The woman in the glass had choppy black hair and dull black eyes. Gone was the immaculate bob cut that she obsessively dyed blue. Her arms and neck were bare, the tell-tale lines of subdermal armour erased. She had grown so used to the ballistic coprocessor, it felt wrong to touch something with her bare palm. She snapped to the camera above. A thought should’ve been all it took, she was good at picking ICE, but all the camera did was return her stare with cold contempt. It was out of her reach. She couldn’t even jump high enough to reach it.</p><p>She was naked, alone, defenceless. Arasaka could do whatever they wanted to her.</p><p>Goro froze on the other side. He looked worried now. V clawed at the glass. When that got her nowhere she slammed her fists against it. A stab of pain shot up her spine. She had to get to him. He was the reason she sold her soul to the literal devil, left her old life behind. Now he was within her reach.</p><p>They would not keep him from her. He was all she had left.</p><p> “Open the door,” She said to Hellman.</p><p>“That’s impossible.” Hellman knew that look in her eyes. He backtracked. “We spent millions building this body. Exposure to contaminants could cause irreversible damage—” He cut himself short when V picked up one of the chairs. It was steel, loose from the floor.</p><p>
  <em>Big mistake.</em>
</p><p>“I said open the goddam door.” She took a step forward. “<em>Now.</em>”</p><p>Hellman withered under her glare. Despite the shootouts she doubt he had seen real blood. There was something about the act of killing. The first life she took for Jenkins changed her forever. She could put on a nice dress, smile and sing, but beneath the farce was something ugly.</p><p>Hellman must’ve seen it. He bolted from the room. V threw the chair after him. <em>Bullseye</em>. Pity there was no strength to her aim. The chair bounced off his hazmat suit, crashing to the floor.</p><p>“V! Please, be calm.” Goro pressed both of his hands against the glass. “They have warned me that—”</p><p>V slammed her firsts on the glass again. The panel shook but remained unmarred. “Goro!”</p><p><em>“Elevated blood pressure!”</em> a panicked voice broadcasted over the intercom.</p><p>“Let me go to her! I will calm her,” Goro said to the voice.</p><p><em>“I’m cutting the feed.”</em> The glass went dark.</p><p>
  <em>No…no no no no no they were taking him!</em>
</p><p>V picked up the other chair and threw it at the glass. The chair struck with a thundering crash. It worked. A hairline crack appeared on the otherwise smooth surface. V grabbed the chair and swung with all her might. When a second time wasn’t enough, she went for a third, fourth, fifth…</p><p>“Re-link the glass!” Goro yelled, the meaning not quite reaching her.</p><p>“<em>But—”</em></p><p>“She is in shock, can’t you see!”</p><p>The dark pixels ebbed. Her arms froze mid-swing. Goro had moved to stand behind where her blow would land. There was no way she was going to hurt him.</p><p>He placed his palm on the fracture. The smart glass was held together with layers of film, but some of the shards had flaked away. She could almost touch him.</p><p>“I will convince them to let me enter, but first, I must be decontaminated.” Despite his endearing moments, Goro had always been a serious man. He pronounced the words carefully, biting down on every syllable. The familiarity reminded her of the space station, or better yet, Night City. V let out a ragged breath. Soon she could make out the meaning of the words again.</p><p>“Do you understand, V?”</p><p>She nodded. She was shaking now. Her nails clattered against the glass.</p><p>Goro noticed this. “Good. Wait for me. I promise I will go to you.” With one final nod from V, he left the room.</p><p>It was as if his palm had been the magnet holding her in place. She slid to the floor. There were footsteps behind her, muffled and heavy, Arasaka security. She didn’t have the strength to turn. Instead she buried her head in her hands. They ached from the repeated blows.</p><p><em>He went back to his masters, like the loyal dog he is. Don’t bother</em>, the cocky voice in her head said.</p><p>
  <em>Shut up. Just shut the fuck up why don’t you, you twice dead fucker.</em>
</p><p>Johnny laughed, the sound slow, hollow, grating. <em>Why are you mad? You know I’m right. Should’ve listened to me, sweet little Vy.</em></p><p>She didn’t know how long she stayed there. The next thing she felt was a hand on her shoulder. She looked up. A man in a hazmat suit kneeled beside her. “V, remember to take deep breaths. There are residual drugs in your system.”</p><p>She moved before she could think. She lunged at him, wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing like her life depended on it. He froze for a split second, but returned the hug.</p><p>“Goro…where am I? Are we still in Night City?”</p><p>“No, V. You are in Tokyo, Japan. Your engram has been stored in Mikoshi while they built your body.” Goro ran a hand down her back in long, soothing strokes. “You have lost a lot of weight.”</p><p>“Lost my whole body.” V held onto him tighter. “Goro...I can still hear him. <em>Johnny</em>. Oh god, I killed him didn’t I?”</p><p>“Do not blame yourself. You did all you could.”</p><p>That was kind of him, but not the words she wanted to hear. She wished he’d just straight up tell her she was a terrible person, like the rest of the people she parted with. Then she’d smoke a few packets and drink until her liver shrivelled. Make being fucked by this whole mess easier.</p><p>She hated how she shook in his arms. In Night City she had been his partner in crime. Didn’t matter if she was a codeless merc, she was competent, someone he could depend on. She bit her lips until she drew blood. “Who am I? W—what am I? Goro, who is this woman, I don’t recognise her…”</p><p>“You are V, the woman who saved my life. You brought me home.”</p><p>V rested her head against his shoulder. He reeked of disinfectant. Despite that there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be. All that mattered was that he was here with her.</p><p>“It will be alright,” Goro whispered as she cried.</p><p>It was worth it, all the pain, the betrayal, heartache.</p><p>For him to hold her like this, it was worth it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The Devil is addiction, craving and passion. He brings fame and fortune, but at the price of losing oneself to a world of material distractions." - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>All comments/kudos will be treasured. Writing is a lonely process. Comments really help to keep the momentum going.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Emperor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Touching Goro through the glass gave her two weeks of sniffles. Hellman refused to allow visitors again. The closest V got to seeing Goro was from behind a new smart panel.</p><p>She tried everything in the book, threatening Hellman, hacking his systems, downright trashing anything she could get her hands on. Difficult was her on a good day. She made little progress. Aside from the neck port, she had zero chrome. The janitor was better equipped. But she was nothing if not persistent. They had to speak with Goro. She knew, because it was him who talked her down. Just like last time.</p><p>It was as if a switch had flipped. They immediately began running their requests through Goro. Every goddamn time she was being ‘uncooperative’, they’d send him to talk to her, in that serious tone with that serious accent, and she’d cave like paper on fire. They had her by the balls and they knew it.</p><p>Time passed slowly in iso. Not that she had the right to complain. She was their lab rat of her own volition. She snorted whenever she thought about it. Was it a promotion or demotion, corpo rat to lab rat? She couldn’t even make a run for it. Expose her to the concrete jungle of Tokyo City and she’d shrivel like a hothouse orchid.</p><p>Between the endless scans and blood tests she had zilch on schedule. Locked in a white room, alone with her thoughts, she had no choice but to reflect. As it turned out, thinking was bad for her health. Too bad none of the staff saw that one coming.</p><p>Sometimes she wondered if Johnny was still there. Then she’d scold herself because she knew damn well he got shredded. A true ghost now in every sense, V still caught his shadow in the corner of her eyes, still heard his insults at the back of her head. But he was no longer with her, be it banging his fists on the wall when he was bored, or starting long conversations with her at the ass end of nowhere. What remained of Johnny was a sensation, like the lingering pain of a limb long lost.</p><p>Six months down the track, Hellman finally saw it fit to sign her release form. She had been pumped of so many experimental vaccines she spent all her newborn hours sick. They gathered her belongings, a big fat suitcase of nothing and carted her off to the debrief room. Hellman gave her a folder. It was the curated version of what Arasaka had on her. Vy Whitlock, now a permanent resident of Japan.</p><p>V stared at the tiny print. She made up that name, Vy Whitlock. She had been so proud of it. The combination of letters looked cool in type and sounded cool as syllables. The name would go down in history, among the likes of Rache Bartmoss, Alt Cunningham, Spider Murphy... She had been so sure.</p><p>Now the letters mocked her, like a wraith of her former self. <em>My oh my oh my</em>, it taunted, taking on her old form with the voice Johnny’s. <em>Look how far you’ve fallen, or perhaps you’ve never gotten back up? Once a corp, always a corp. You’ve sold yourself to live as a lie. You’re worse than a nobody. You’re a nobody with not even a dream to call your own. Pathetic.</em></p><p>V closed the folder. There was no point in arguing. They were right and quite frankly unoriginal. It was nothing she hadn’t told herself. “Well, here’s to never seeing you again.” She pushed herself from the chair.</p><p>Hellman cleared his throat. “As much as I wish that was true, I am responsible for your routine diagnostics. I will meet you in Arasaka headquarters every fortnight. My assistant will send you the schedule.”</p><p>“Surely they have someone lower on the food chain for that, unpaid intern, perhaps?” She walked out without a backward glance. The corridor to the release valve was a short one. It was afternoon. The rays made her squint. When her eyes adjusted to the light, there was a Mizutani Shion convertible parked in the open.</p><p>It was red, with the top off. A man dressed in a white shirt and black slacks leaned against the door. His eyes were trained on her. He must’ve seen her the millisec she passed through that door. V swore it was the light that made her eyes water. She made a beeline for him. It began as a dignified walk but soon broke into a sprint. A pair of strong arms caught her, lifting her from the ground. Without the hazmat suit, his skin was warm through the dress shirt. She rested her temple against his cheek. He smelled of oak and the sun.</p><p>“I’m glad you are here, V,” Goro eventually let her go.</p><p>She blinked away the moisture. “The fox leaps across the stream with its head held high.”</p><p>Goro laughed, the sound as carefree as she has ever heard him. She hopped into his convertible, tossing the folder on the back seat. Goro pulled them from the compound. Discharge was close to the main gate. On second thought, she was positive he was not supposed to park there.</p><p>The drive forth was smooth. She glanced at the GPS. They were on the outskirts of the Tokyo Prefecture, some distance from the city. She caught him looking at her through the rear view.</p><p>“What was that expression of yours?” Goro mused. “You look like a million Eddies.”</p><p>V chuckled. She was bland as a new born and sporting patient overalls. Trust Goro to get back at her for that quip in Japantown. “Flatterer. First up is a trip to the hairdresser. Then we hit the ripperdoc. Got any local ones you recommend?” She gave him a deliberately slow once-over. “Or is all that chrome ‘saka exclusive?”</p><p>“The company provides and maintains my cyberware, but I know a few ripperdocs in the region.” Goro returned his eyes to the road. “Unfortunately…that will have to wait.”</p><p>Her jaw tightened. “Where are we going?”</p><p>“Saburo-sama wishes to see you.”</p><p>
  <em>“Oh.”</em>
</p><p>The name ate the air between them until all that remained was a dark vacuum. Of course, Saburo fucking Arasaka. She did sign away her rights, might as well be a piece of chewed gum at this stage.</p><p>“V, Saburo-sama does not impress easily. I showed him the footage of our assault on Arasaka Tower, how you defeated Adam Smasher. He simply wishes to speak with you, please try to remain respectful.”</p><p>Johnny laughed somewhere in the back of her head. The wind tossed her hair. She swept it back non-too-gently and turned to the barren fields. It was a plane of scorched nothing. Hills of rubbish eclipsed the distant mountains. For some reason, she had thought Japan would be greener.</p><p>“V…”</p><p>“Not like I have a choice. Let’s get this over with.”</p><p>A tense silence smothered the car. She should say something. This was nothing she hadn’t signed up for and she shouldn’t take it out on him. But the truth was, if he hadn’t refused to consider all alternatives, she would’ve either shot up Mikoshi with Johnny or be long dead and buried. She was fine with that. She had never been afraid of death. What scared her shitless was meaningless life.</p><p>She withdrew her gaze from the fields. Something on the glove compartment caught her eye. She ran her fingers over the silver logo. “You like this model, don’t you? Remember the last time I was in it? Questioned for a hot sec if you could drive straight.”</p><p>Goro smiled. It was a small one, rueful this time. “I remember, like many other moments. I promised to show you Japan, make you real Japanese food.”</p><p>“Don’t get my hopes up. I’ll hold you to that.”</p><p>“I intend to fulfil my promise.”</p><p>V arched an eyebrow. She kicked back in the seat, thought about it, and added: “It’s a date.”</p><p>The rest of the drive passed in light banter. They had caught up with each other during her six months in iso. Almost singlehandedly resurrecting the company’s emperor made for impressive quota. Goro was promoted to Saburo’s head of security. This meant he followed Saburo out of town more often than she liked, but the pay and chrome upgrades were on par. Guess that suicidal jump onto Hanako’s float paid off after all.</p><p>It still bought a bitter taste to her mouth, how Goro had been willing to throw away his life if it meant Hanako would consider his testimony. They later discovered that she had it figured out all along. Goro was innocent, competent, honourable to a fault. She turned a blind eye to his kill order knowing fully what fate awaited him. He was abandoned like an injured dog, scampering through the alleys. V shuddered to think what could’ve happened if she hadn’t gone back for him that day. Despite everything he remained loyal. She couldn’t tell if he was stupidly stubborn, or stubbornly stupid.</p><p>They pulled into a mega-building at the heart of the Chuo-ku ward. It had been raining earlier. The tower was veiled by a dark mist. The guards nodded at Goro as they passed the security check. Goro led her to a lift. It was a glass tube. The cameras scanned them. Then they began to ascend. The flagship Tokyo Arasaka HQ was a sight to behold. Neo-minimalist at its core, a sculptural atrium punctured the building, flooding the black interior with light. Carefully placed bonsai livened the space. There were suits everywhere, some in small groups, others dashing about like they were late to their grandmother’s funeral.</p><p>The same stress, the same skulduggery, the same air of despair.</p><p>“What do you see in them?” She couldn’t help herself. The words just slipped out.</p><p>“V, we’ve talked about this,” Goro said quietly. The moment he crossed the threshold, his demeanour changed. His spine snapped in place. The warmth in his eyes vanished, leaving nothing but hard lines. Save for a small frown, his face was a mask of stern passivity.</p><p>“Yeah, sorry.” Too late did she realise she had done the same. She lifted her chin, as if a hook had strung it to the ceiling, pulling her taut. Her face settled into an expression of detached boredom. She crossed her arms. Give her another minute and she’d start tapping her imaginary heels.</p><p>The elevator opened with a soft chime. They crossed a black hall lined with marble. A set of double doors lay at the end. A man sat outside, behind a table of oiled wood. He was in his late forties, non-combat implants. He stood to greet them, exchanging a small nod with Goro.</p><p>“I will wait for you here,” Goro said.</p><p>V hummed, a tad colder than she would’ve liked, but rule one of the corp survival guide was to never expose who you were attached to. Unless it was to flaunt your connections, in that case crank it up to eleven.</p><p>The man handed her a translator. She clipped it to her ear. Goro’s gaze burned a hole on her back. She didn’t hesitate. With three sure steps she entered the room. It was an extension of the space outside, dark, overbearing, thick with authority. The shell of Yurinobu Arasaka sat at the head of the table. A Braindance headset rested against his temples. He was mid recording. V stood where she was, still as a freeze-frame. It was easier than she thought it’d be. The schooled indifference was etched into her soul. One could take the rat out of the corp, but never the corp out of the rat.</p><p>While she was waiting, she tuned in on the voice that leaked from the headset. She’d recognise it anywhere. On roll was a BD of their fight with Adam Smasher. Goro had mentioned this footage. Come to think of it, where did he get it? To blind Yurinobu’s men, she caused a mass surveillance blackout in the area. Intuition pointed her to a certain gunhand. He never left her side, not even to find cover. She had thought it odd that he paid her such attention, what with Smasher skewering his comrades in the backdrop. Now she knew why. The little fuck was recording her. Arasaka wanted to weigh her up against the best Solo they had.</p><p>Without a doubt the toughest son-of-a-bitch she had ever fried, the gunfire returned her to the day of the assault. Crouching behind cover, she had to work quickly. First she ran Breach Protocol, picked apart Smasher’s ICE and quickhack resistance. Then she uploaded VYRUS, her personal strand of Contagion. His cyberware leaked toxins into his bloodstream, muddling his thoughts. She gave him no time to breathe. Goro was in his line of fire. Bastard had been more machine than human, so she hit him with Short Circuit. It worked like a charm. Just as he found his footing her background upload was complete. She crippled his nervous system, causing him to black out. Goro and Oda made quick work of what was left of him.</p><p>Looking back, it had been a short fight, but it felt like years at the time. She had studied Smasher like an obsession, dissected him in her mind then stitched him back together. She knew she wouldn’t face him alone, and there wasn’t a cold chance in hell she’d let the psycho touch the people she loved. She spent days devising a plan. Then she practiced. She practiced and practiced and practiced until even Johnny told her to sleep. Then she practiced some more. She had promised Johnny she would end him.</p><p>End him she did. She got a killer migraine from exerting her RAM. Combine that with the Relic malfunctions and she was a convulsing mess. It had been Goro who carried her until she could walk again.</p><p>The sitting man took off his headset. He looked at her. She felt her mask slip but pulled it back up last minute. There was no mistaking which soul piloted the shell. Saburo looked at people like he was an insect collector, bent over their sedated body, mulling over which limb to pin.</p><p>“You have never undergone proper training.” Saburo spoke in Japanese. The translator faithfully relayed his message. V didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question. “The best Arasaka engineers worked on him. Many analysed this recording. They gave me answers, some technical, others psychological.” His gaze pricked against her skin. “Sit. I want to hear it from you.”</p><p>V complied. She took the furthest seat, directly opposite him. “Hear what? How I did it?”</p><p>“No.” Saburo took off his glasses. His gaze seemed to pierce her soul. “He had been incapacitated, begged for his life. What did you feel, when you ended a man like that?”</p><p>She didn’t blink. She stared right back, through Yurinobu’s shell and into Saburo’s eyes. “Satisfaction.”</p><p>Saburo sneered. It was an ugly sight. If there was a devil incarnate, they had nothing on the Arasaka emperor. “You have no honour, no principles, a true thief by choice. You consented to his demise, Silverhand.”</p><p>She clenched her jaw.</p><p>The man on the other side studied her a moment longer. “With a short leash, you will do well.”</p><p>Her temper flared, burning her lungs. She did her best to squash it. “There’s only one reason why I signed that contract. You and I both know what that is. I’ll work for you. I don’t have to like it, in fact I’m sure I won’t, but I’ll work for you. That’s as much as you’ll get out of me.”</p><p>“Takemura-kun has served me well. Despite the state of that city, there had been assets worth salvaging. Now you belong to Arasaka.” Saburo’s eyes lit up. She had no implants. The assistant manning the door entered with a package. He placed it before her, bowed to the far end of the room, and left.</p><p>V opened it. Inside was an induction manual, including her job description, keys to a new apartment, and appointments for an extensive list of upgrades.</p><p>No other contract was needed. She was already company property.</p><p>V took this as her cue to leave. She rose with controlled movements, making her way toward the door in slow and deliberate steps. She would not flee. As her hand wrapped around the handle, Saburo spoke again.</p><p>“Takemura-kun speaks highly of you. I will allow your…fraternization, so long as it doesn’t prove to be a distraction. You have talent. This I will not deny. It is time you put it to use, and <em>serve</em>.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The Emperor makes the rules and enforces them for the common good. But prestige has its dark sides – the Emperor is dominating and ruthless and will climb over a mountain of bodies to achieve his aim." - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>A huge thank you to everyone who has interacted with this work. We are just getting started, but first, date night is up next. ;D</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For those interested, the featured song is:<br/>Lana Del Rey (cover) - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZCisbqnh5U">Blue Velvet</a></p><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V made hitting those appointments a priority. Not that she loved ‘saka chrome, but she needed gear to get back up and running.</p><p>The inconvenience of dying aside, during her final months in Night City she had the best of everything. V was choosy. Arasaka did not skimp on their employees. Even she salivated at a pair of hot-off-the-conveyor-belt Kiroshi MK.4s. Her induction manual stated Arasaka would provide any equipment necessary to execute her tasks. Continuing her difficult streak, she went with nothing on the surgeon’s list. The Arasaka MK.4 OS sucked balls next to her tried and tested NetWatch Netdriver MK.5. She had a hit scheduled in a week and refused to run with anything else. They had to ship a copy of the deck from Europe, paid a pretty penny too.</p><p>It was a strange sight, watching flesh being carved from her bones again. Despite that she was losing mass, she felt pieces of her old self return. She began to obsessively replace her cyberware. First the optics and wrist jack, then the subdermal armour, ballistic coprocessor, bio-conductor, tyrosine injector, ex-disk, and finally memory boost. Once she had what she worked with in 2077, she crammed in some more for good measure. It was as if the less flesh she had, the less Arasaka owned her.</p><p>The lead up to her first hit passed in quiet coding time. It went smoothly, no different than merc work. Target was down before his security team hit the floor. The sensitive information was secured and she got three days off. During the same week Goro left on a business trip with Saburo. He called every night or whenever he had the chance. She appreciated the gesture, but in truth she missed him.</p><p>Being alone in a city of millions didn’t help her relationship with Johnny. The man was a vindictive bastard, made mocking her his new favourite pastime. She worked herself to the bone, for every free thought she had was either a cruel remark from Johnny or her thinking of the what-ifs could-ifs.</p><p>She completed the mammoth project of replacing her self-ICE. She had dubbed it V-ICE in her old life. Once they got tangled, few runners escaped its clutch. When she finished the upload she did a floor-to-ceiling sweep of her apartment, then inside her own body. She wished she’d found something. Saburo himself had said she needed a short leash. Did they think Goro was enough to bind her? She could easily sabotage their network and disappear into the dark net. There has to be something she missed.</p><p>But clues did not reveal themselves, not unless she knew where to look. V rubbed her eyes. She deleted the same block of code for the fourth time that evening. She couldn’t think straight. It might be the caffeine, painkillers, or Johnny acting up again. With a groan, she jacked out and threw herself onto the bed. Goro was scheduled to return tomorrow. She pulled up his contact and stared at it.</p><p>No, she wouldn’t text. She wasn’t some clingy teenager. He had a job to do and mustn’t be distracted.</p><p>At that exact second the phone buzzed. It slipped from her hand, hitting her on the face. <em>Ouch</em>. [Are you available tomorrow evening?] V didn’t have to look at the number to know it was Goro.</p><p>[Yes, I am.] She hit send before she could stop herself. Real smooth, V, not desperate at all.</p><p>[Excellent. There is a package waiting for you, downstairs at reception.]</p><p>Colour her intrigued. V bounced from her bed. She texted furiously as she kicked on some shoes. [Oooo, we playin’ detective? This some sort of test?]</p><p>She sprung downstairs at record speed. Her new apartment was on the third floor, nested in an Arasaka complex built for company employees. It was no Konpeki Plaza, but still leagues cleaner than her mega-building back in Night City. She was surrounded by ‘saka eyes and ears. Her fingers twitched with the urge to cause another mass surveillance blackout. She told herself the package was more important.</p><p>“Is there anything for me?” V asked the AI manning reception.</p><p>She scanned her and said: “one parcel for Ms. Vy Whitlock.”</p><p>“That’s me.”</p><p>It was a large, unmarked box, covered with black gift-wrap, about the length of her leg. Her thoughts immediately went to submachine gun. She slapped her forehead. Goro knew she favoured precision rifles. She gave it a good shake, too light to be firearm.</p><p>[Open it upstairs.] Trust Goro to know she was too impatient to wait.</p><p>[I’m not on a timer, am I? Is this my next clue?] V skipped the steps two at a time. She bumped the door shut with her ass and began tearing at the gift-wrap. As the thick layer gave way, she spotted the logo embossed on the lid. No…it couldn’t be.</p><p>She propped the naked box on her bed and opened it. Inside was a blue velvet evening dress. It was the colour of nightfall. The soft fibres reflected a subtle purple sheen. Floor length with thin spaghetti straps and a high slit on the side, hand-sewn embroidery adorned the hem. The threads were silver like moon dust. Light caught them from all angles. Beneath the LED strips of her apartment, the dress <em>sparkled</em>.</p><p>It was a Japanese brand she couldn’t pronounce, on par with Jinguji but rare in Night City. She remembered seeing it in a display window. It had been so stunning she even recalled the name of the piece.</p><p><em>Starlight Maiden</em>.</p><p>[As you are new to Tokyo, I took the liberty of purchasing something. I hope I am not being too forward.]</p><p>It took her a while to recover. As she was dying from a brain tumor, saving up hadn’t been at the top of her priorities. She made a point to enjoy life while she could, blowing a ridiculous amount on creature comforts. Did Goro mistake that for her usual taste?</p><p>She texted with shaky fingers. [Goro, I can’t possibly accept this.]</p><p>[Do you like it?]</p><p>[It’s beautiful, but this thing costs a literal arm and leg.]</p><p>It took him longer to reply this time. Her heart jolted at the paragraph.</p><p>[When I failed my duties that day at Konpeki Plaza, I had lost more than a job. My cybernetics, my honour, my purpose, everything I took pride in was taken from me. I knew I must fight, but I was alone, a stranger in a hostile city. I had not planned on returning to Japan alive. Even then I knew it would not be enough. You helped me without reservation, came in my hour of need. Without you I could not have cleared my name. I never had the chance to thank you, not properly. Now please allow me to take you out for the evening.]</p><p>V stared at the message in stunned silence. This has to be some sort of record, the rate he could bring her to tears. She typed up a response then deleted it. Typed up another one then deleted that too. She settled with: [How did you know blue was my favourite colour?]</p><p>[Through careful observation.]</p><p>[You owned mostly blue clothes.]</p><p>[Dyed your hair blue.]</p><p>[Painted your nails blue.]</p><p>[Augmented firearm with blue mods.] Goro replied in his rapid fire special.</p><p>[Okay okay, dumb question, moving on…] V wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She and Goro talked a bit more before he had to go. She set her phone down and took a deep breath. The dress lay quietly on the bed beside her. She rummaged through the rest of the box. There was even a second tier. It contained a pair of black heels, a clutch, and a thigh holster. She smiled. Goro knew she preferred to be packin’.</p><p>This had to be without a doubt, the most effort someone had ever put into a date with her. It was only fair she returned the courtesy. They had both seen each other at their worst. A face caked with mud was nothing to blink at. But there was no reason she shouldn’t try to impress.</p><p>During her last hit for Arasaka, she took the liberty of touring her target’s data fortress. Bad habit, she knew, but the access point was <em>right there</em>, and the ICE so thin… She permanently borrowed some New Yen. In her defence, he wouldn’t have missed it even if he hadn’t gotten flatlined by another squad member. The detour padded her bank account with a few extra digits.</p><p>She spent the next morning shopping then got her hair cut and dyed. The return to familiarity did wonders for her state of mind. Her preferred bob cut was practical and professional. The shade matched her optics. When she got home she took a long, hot shower. She carefully slipped on the dress, heels, and thigh holster. The fit was perfect. Goro was good at sizing up his opponents. She took time with her makeup, applying a perfect cat eye and black, duo-chrome lipstick.</p><p>She stared at her reflection in the mirror. While she had been on her chrome replacement streak, she also added fat back to her chest and ass. Muscle mass she’d regain slowly, but when it came to superficial nonsense she lacked the patience. She refused to walk around like a husk of her former self. At one point even Johnny admitted she was hot. The thin spaghetti straps showed off her cleavage. With her new, or rather old figure, the dress was probably more revealing than Goro had intended. <em>Perfect</em>.</p><p>She did a small twirl. Not bad for a newborn. She popped her pistol into the holster and waited until nightfall. The entire hall stared as she sauntered to the main entrance. She was a little early, could use a cigarette. She had quit when she left Arasaka, but between Johnny’s nagging and swimming neck-deep in shit, there hadn’t been many ways to wind down. Now she was back where she started. Only fitting her old habits returned.</p><p>She opened her clutch. Another hand beat her to it. It held a cigarette up to her lips. Her gaze travelled from the hand to the man it was attached to. He looked familiar.</p><p>“V, right? Best runner I’ve seen in a while.” The translator faithfully relayed his message. He was from recon, worked with her on the recent hit. He had a name...what was it?</p><p>She did that smile of hers where it was overly warm to compensate for her slip at the intro. She sidestepped the cigarette. “Pleasure working with you.”</p><p>“Have a job scheduled next? I want you on my team.” He brought the cigarette up to his own lips and lit it.</p><p>“No, not yet. I’m waiting for someone.”</p><p>She let her smile fade. He didn’t get the hint, or he got it, but chose to ignore it. They exchanged clipped small talk. Then he made his move.</p><p>“It’s not nice to let a lady wait. What do you say we ditch this loser?”</p><p>“I was early, and no, I have places to be. Now leave.” Her optics began to glow. It was as obvious a warning as she was going to give.</p><p>The man grinned. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The mantis blade on his forearms popped open. She has seen him in action, leagues behind Oda.</p><p>“I like them with spark.” He took a deliberate step forward. Just as she debated whether it was worth causing a scene to show him some real sparks, he froze in his tracks. “Ta—Takemura-san.”</p><p>She whipped around, nearly scraping her nose on a chrome neck. A hand shot to her waist, steadying her. Goro stood behind her, silent as a shadow. The height difference still threw her off. In Night City, his eyes had been in her direct line of sight. He was mostly hunched, as if the very air of the city squeezed him from above. When he walked, he threw his shoulders forth and dragged his feet behind. It was the dead chrome. She could always hear him coming. Now he moved with the grace of a feline. Despite her heels he remained half a head taller. His arms were lax but left no openings. The glow of his optics was a shade from hell.</p><p>“<em>ファックオフ。</em><em>(Fuck off.)</em>”</p><p>When it became clear Goro would refrain from beheading him, the man bowed deeply.</p><p>“So he did know what was good for him,” V mused as he made a run for it.</p><p>Goro watched the man disappear around the corner. He paused, a moment longer than necessary. The man didn’t return. “Must you always get into trouble?” He sighed into her ear.</p><p>The hot breath made her shiver. They were close, too close for polite conversation. She could feel the fabric of his suit jacket ghost past her back. “Me, trouble? <em>Never.</em>”</p><p>There was a pool of heat in her stomach. She pulled back a touch to appreciate his attire. Not counting the getup in Night City, this was the first time she has seen him out of uniform. He wore a black double breasted jacket with a wafuku inspired dress shirt. His hair was tied in his preferred top knot, lightly oiled and not a strand out of place. He smelled divine.</p><p>While she studied him, he did the same to her. His lips were slightly parted as he took in her figure. She caught his gaze wonder to her cleavage. He tore it away last minute.</p><p>“You look…heavenly,” Goro said.</p><p>“All thanks to you.” The distance was too tempting. She pecked him on the cheek.</p><p>He didn’t budge, but the red tip of his ears betrayed him. He moved to guide her to his car. For a moment both of them forgot the low cut of her dress. His palm landed on her bare back. A bout of electricity struck her, shooting from the point of contact all the way up her spine. It scrambled her brain. From the way he flinched, he must’ve felt it too.</p><p>She couldn’t help it. Her cheeks burned. Goro lowered his hand until it landed on the small of her back, where the fabric began. He helped her down the steps and opened the door for her. She didn’t need any of it, yet the pool of heat had grown to the point where she thought she’d melt. The air was hot and sticky. She thanked whichever deity was listening that the Shion was a convertible.</p><p>With the night wind on her face, she could breathe again. She watched the city fly past. It was a quiet moment. The corners of her mouth seemed to have a mind of their own.</p><p>“Why are you smiling?” Goro asked.</p><p>“Nothing, it’s just…this is too good to be real. I never thought they’d keep their promise. I had zero expectations. I can’t believe I’m actually here, in Toyko, with you, that we’re on a date and you're taking me out for food.” She turned to him with a mischievous grin. “I thought you were going to cook for me.”</p><p>“I will, but not tonight.” Goro’s reply was more solemn than she anticipated. When they stopped at the lights, he turned to face her. “Why did you sign the contract, if you did not believe?”</p><p>She didn’t have an answer to that. The light turned green and they began to move again. It took her a while to realise Goro had taken his right hand off the gears. It was facing up, angled toward her. She took it with both hands. She would not cry, not on date night.</p><p>The restaurant they pulled up to was understated, but tastefully embellished with traditional Japanese elements. A waiter greeted them and sat them at the counter. They were the only customers.</p><p>It was omakase. She didn’t say it out loud, but damn was she impressed. She had wanted to try omakase ever since she heard of it, but the few places worth going in Night City were always booked till the next season. How did Goro manage to reserve a slot at this hour, and on such short notice?</p><p>“I know the owner and head chef of this establishment, saved his life many years ago,” Goro said softly.</p><p>They didn’t have to wait long. The head chef walked in with several bamboo boxes of ingredients. He placed them behind the counter, bowed, and went to work. Deft fingers pressed freshly steamed rice into shape. The tuna went on, completed with a light brush of wasabi soy. A delicate piece of nigiri was placed before her. She picked it up carefully, humming as she chewed. The rice was fluffy with a hint of vinegar. The fish tasted of the ocean. No chemicals, just pure, clean sea. It melted in her mouth. Thank the heavens she went with Tom’s when Goro asked her for a joint to recommend. The sushi in Night City would’ve been insulting.</p><p>She gave Goro the thumbs up. He watched her chew with a smile. The head chef was on a roll. Next up was flounder, then squid, inada, clam, octopus…by the time he was done she was sure she could ever go back to her Japantown food stalls. They were served tea and given a quiet moment to chat.</p><p>To this day, she had never felt love at first sight. She was used to detachment. The job was easier if all she blew up were threats, not people. When she first met Goro, he had been exactly that. She’d catalogued his chrome, considered his age, mulled over his qualifications. She took into account everything but whom he actually was.</p><p>As it turned out, beneath the shell of Saburo’s personal killing machine was a man full of contradictions. He meant pure biz, but sent her the dorkiest messages. He would die for honour, but begged her to spare Oda’s life after he was defeated. Some days she couldn’t read him. Others she knew exactly what he was thinking. She loathed Arasaka, yet as a trademark company man, the more he talked, the more he pulled her in.</p><p>He took her to a bar next, the <em>Black Rose</em>. It was close to the Arasaka complex, with dark upholstery and flickering chandeliers. To her surprise they were playing live blues.</p><p>“This where you got your van jams from?” V grinned over her negroni. Following the regrettable demise of Shion 1.0, Goro had to find another way to get around town. Public transport was a no-go, cams everywhere. To this day she had no idea where he found that heinous van. It had been playing the blues on their way to see Wakako. He had not struck her as the type to listen to love songs, or anything, really. That had been the moment the layers started to peel back.</p><p>“I like this place. It is close to home. When I am not needed, I come often to unwind.” Goro had ordered a whisky on the rocks. The floor was packed. He observed the dancing couples. After a while, as if he had made up his mind, his optics began to glow blue. He swirled the whisky around the ice and downed it in one swig.</p><p>V tilted her head. “What did you do?”</p><p>“Come, let us dance.” Goro extended his hand.</p><p>She stared at his chrome knuckles, jaw wide open. “No way, you <em>danced?</em>”</p><p>He almost looked offended. “It is not hard. Come.”</p><p>She knocked back her own drink and placed her hand in his. What had been appropriate for omakase landed them firmly on the side of overdressed. The crowd parted as they walked onto the dance floor. The hem of her dress sparkled under the chandeliers. She took in their linked hands. Felt his fingers intertwine with hers.</p><p>There was a change of music. What had been smooth but upbeat gave way to something slower, laced with melancholy. “What is this?” She breathed into his ear.</p><p>“It was the song I thought of when I saw you this evening.” Their hands remained linked. Goro placed his other on the small of her back. It slipped lower than before, a hair shy of her hips. She didn’t have to think. She rested her free hand on his chest and leaned in until her lips touched his cheek. A woman hummed into the microphone, her voice distant like a dream.</p><p>
  <em>-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She wore blue velvet<br/>Bluer than velvet was the night<br/>Softer than satin was the light<br/>From the stars</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She wore blue velvet<br/>Bluer than velvet were her eyes<br/>Warmer than May her tender sighs<br/>Love was ours</em>
</p><p>-</p><p>They glided through the dance floor. She could see nothing but him. There was a scar that ran from his left cheekbone to his hairline. She kissed it.</p><p>-</p><p>
  <em>Ours a love I held tightly<br/>Feeling the rapture grow<br/>Like a flame burning brightly<br/>But when she left, gone was the glow of</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Blue velvet<br/>But in my heart there'll always be<br/>Precious and warm, a memory<br/>Through the years<br/>And I still can see blue velvet<br/>Through my tears</em>
</p><p>-</p><p>Goro kissed her neck in return. She bit back a moan. He held her face with both hands and locked eyes with her. He was searching for something, permission, perhaps. The silly man didn’t know he had it the moment she gave him her hand. She pressed her lips against his, closing the last of the distance.</p><p>The first time they had been together was on a grimy mattress in Sunset Motel. Following the raid on his hideout, Goro had suggested they split. She had been so livid with his dumb suggestion that she tailed him until he had no choice but to come. They dove through the streets on Jackie’s ARCH, dispatched two Arasaka hit squads and narrowly missed the third. By the time they locked their motel door, they were both sore, riddled with bruises, and on an all-time adrenaline high. It had been more a hard fuck to blow off steam than make love. Tonight was different.</p><p>By some miracle they made it back to her apartment. She hadn’t cared which one they went to and hers was closer. Goro slammed the door shut then set about devouring her mouth. She fumbled with the zip of her dress. Her body was on fire. She rocked against him, and the control he took such pride in crumbled. He lifted her by the ass and tossed her onto the bed. It knocked the air from her lungs. At some point the dress slipped to the floor. She brushed her hair back to find him…staring.</p><p>She grinned mischievously. He has been so good to her, bought her a nice dress with a nice care package. It was only fair she did something for his enjoyment. It had taken a while, but after digging through the net she found a set of dark blue lingerie that the dress completely concealed. The bra was strapless, stitched from translucent mesh. A leather garter belt held up two smaller rings around each thigh. She chose a G-string with matching mesh. Her body was almost visible, a look more revealing than wearing nothing. Through the rough manhandling she even managed to keep her heels on.</p><p>She allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. Goro watched her with unblinking intensity. She was going to give him a show. She spread herself on the bed and arched her back, urging him to join her. Goro didn’t need to be told twice. He tore off his suit jacket and climbed in bed.</p><p>“Beautiful,” he rasped as he bit her neck, sucking and teasing the flesh there.</p><p>It was impossible to keep a level head around this man. Luckily she was no ordinary thief. Just as he settled on top of her, she hooked a leg around his waist and tugged. In an instant their position was reversed. She pinned Goro beneath her. Next to his heavy build she was a fragile runner. He could easily overpower her, but he chose to remain still.</p><p>He ran his hands up her thighs and held her there. He was being good, <em>oh so good</em>. Men who behaved deserved special reward. Her fingers worked deftly to free him of his shirt. She drank in the sight of him. The way his cyberware bled down his neck, his corded muscles and chest riddled with scars. She unbuckled his belt. Then while remaining perfect eye contact, pulled his zipper down with her teeth.</p><p>“V…” Goro gasped.</p><p>She freed his length from his briefs. He was rock hard. Holding eye contact, she dragged her tongue up his shaft, kissed the tip, and swallowed him in one go. Goro cursed something in his native tongue. His fingers found their way into her hair. He wasn’t pulling.</p><p>
  <em>Not yet. </em>
</p><p>V grinned as she set to work. She hollowed her cheeks and bobbed her head up and down. She set a tortuously slow pace, nudging his tip with her tongue at odd intervals. Goro grunted. Bits of broken Japanese slipped out. It wasn’t long before she found the tug she was looking for. Her mouth slid free with a pop. Goro was a panting mess. His top knot had come undone. Black locks laced with silver cascaded past his shoulders. V bit her lips at the sight. She had spent a ridiculous amount of time imagining him like this. She made sure Goro was looking and dragged her tongue across her bottom lip.</p><p>“Devious minx,” Goro said through clenched teeth. Her world spun and suddenly she was beneath him again. He all but ripped the bra from her chest. His hands kneaded her breasts. It wasn’t gentle. She liked it that way. Goro lifted her legs onto his shoulder. She was still wearing the holster, her pistol faithfully strapped in.</p><p>“Concealed weaponry,” Goro mused. He slowly slid the G-string from her hips. “What are you planning, thief?”</p><p>The rasp of his voice drove her mad with lust. But she was patient, calculative. In cyberspace she was an apex predator. She reminded herself of that fact and put on her best nonchalant act. “<em>Oh dear</em>, I have been caught. Whatever shall I do, <em>sir?</em>”</p><p>“Repent, and maybe I can be convinced to let you go.” Two fingers entered her without warning. She let out an embarrassing yelp. Goro worked her open with the thoroughness of a trained hunter. She was in no way, shape or form a virgin, but her new body was tight. Goro seemed to realise this. Now she was the one on the receiving end of a tortuously slow pace.</p><p>“Ah…please Goro.” She covered her eyes with her hands.</p><p>Goro tore them from her face. He gathered her wrists with one hand and pinned them on top of her head. He continued to work her open with the other, chrome knuckles sliding in and out of her. “Please what?”</p><p>“Please…just fuck me.” She refused to look at him, opting to squeeze her eyes shut. Bad move, because the sensation of being finger fucked by the man she loved increased hundred-fold. She opened her eyes again to find Goro smirking. She grunted. Nope, she wouldn’t beg. But she was empty, has been empty for so long that if she stayed that way her innards might collapse onto themselves. “Goro, <em>please.</em>”</p><p>“Very well, my sly little fox.” He thrust into her. His pelvis met her ass in one go.</p><p>She let out a high pitched whine. He was inside, all of him, stretching her open. He stilled for a heartbeat. It was all the warning she got before he started pounding into her. The angle gave him full access. With each thrust he pushed deeper. It was all too much and not enough. She didn’t know what she was saying anymore. She could be pleading for him to slow down, or begging him to fuck her like her life depended on it. She clenched around him and threw her head back. Her orgasm hit her like a truck.</p><p>With impossible control, Goro stilled. He’d found the spot and angled himself against it perfectly. He increased the pressure with each passing second. She drowned in a storm of pleasure. She had never come this hard. Tears welled in her eyes as she lay on her back, staring at his face.</p><p>“Goro…”</p><p>He kissed her gingerly. He hadn’t gotten his own release, but he waited. The period of hypersensitivity passed and she could think again. Before she knew what was happening, she was flipped onto her belly. He dug his fingers into the groove where her belly met her thighs and pulled her onto him. Her throat was hoarse from all the noise she was making. He went deep, so impossibly deep that she thought he’d split her in half. She couldn’t feel her legs any more. Everything south of her waist has been reduced to a pool of flaming liquid. All she could hear was the sound of him fucking into her, a wet noise of flesh slapping against flesh. She was definitely begging now.</p><p>“This is your punishment.” The frustrating man laughed into her ear.</p><p>She had a quip lined up, something about making break-ins a habit but Goro slammed the wits from her. She could feel his palm on her back, sliding down her spine. She wiggled her ass, earning her a sharp slap. She used what little strength she had left to rock against him, moaning shamelessly.</p><p>He came as she clenched around him, toppled by another wave of pleasure. Thick spurts of cum coated her walls. The sensation alone was enough to make her come again. When the world refocused around her, she found Goro lying on top of her.</p><p>Lying was perhaps an incorrect term. He was on top of her, but most of his weight fell on his hands and knees. V sighed. <em>Ever the gentleman</em>.  Goro was still inside her. She savoured the moment until he gently pulled out. Something hot slid down her thighs. Goro didn’t go anywhere. He kneeled over her, studying her bare form.</p><p>She didn’t need a mirror to know what a mess she was, makeup smeared, cum dripping from her entrance, ass red with a hand print. Goro turned her over and pulled her into his arms. Fingers that could dent steel caressed her cheek, the touch feather soft. Her eyes began to drift close.</p><p>“Rest now, little fox.” A kiss landed on her temple. She kissed him back and drifted into blissful darkness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The Star is the card of hope. In the darkest of nights there is a light that shines the path to home." - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>And that was date night! They had a wonderful time, but what had it cost to get here?</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Wheel of Fortune</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V woke from what had been her deepest sleep in years. She was alone, naked under the covers. Her garter belt had been removed and the stain between her thighs cleaned. Goro was nowhere to be seen. God, what time was it? She propped herself up on her elbow.</p><p>Given the short time she had been in Japan, there wasn’t much in her apartment save for the furniture that came with it. She was a senior runner but Tokyo was heavily over-populated. She had been assigned a studio space, much like her old one in Night City. There was an alcove bed, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a tiny storeroom which she converted into her armoury.</p><p>The changes were obvious. Her dress and holster lay folded on the table, next to her netrunning gear. What mess they made last night had been tidied. Her lingerie was placed in a basket on top of her washing machine. She threw her hands over her face and groaned. Never has a man fucked her senseless then clean up her apartment. There was even a glass of water on her nightstand, and…a key?</p><p>She reached over and dangled it over her face. It was an unassuming piece of metal. Freshly milled, judging from the shiny teeth. A cat charm hung from it. For a moment she couldn’t tell what it was for. Then it hit her. She grabbed her clutch and found the keys to her own apartment. They were almost identical, only a slight difference in the shape of the teeth. Goro lived in the same complex.</p><p>Did he—had he just?</p><p>She got dressed in record speed. She was on the last day of her break and thus had nowhere to be, but the butterflies in her stomach were eating her alive. As she slipped on her heels, her phone buzzed.</p><p>[Will you join me for dinner, tonight at 7?] It was Goro.</p><p>[Sure. Your place?]</p><p>[Yes. Building A, apartment 407.]</p><p>[Should I bring anything?]</p><p>[Only an empty stomach.]</p><p>[Will do, stay out of trouble.] There was a pause from the other end.</p><p>[Be safe, little fox.]</p><p>A blush ignited her face. Her cheeks were so hot it felt like a cyberware malfunction. The old man had no business being this…this…</p><p>“Ugh!” V shoved her phone into her jacket. She stormed downstairs for a sandwich. A long black with quadruple shots later, she debated if she should stay in for a quiet afternoon of coding. An advert caught her eye. It was a Militech rifle. She hasn’t seen it before, must be a new model.</p><p>Merc life gave her a brain tumour, but being recognised on the streets was not without privileges. She had contacts, some shady, others respectable, <em>all useful</em>. From the now mayor of Night City to prominent fixers, granted none of them was in Tokyo, she should still check up on them.</p><p>Give them a ping from the afterlife.</p><p>V walked out of the café and onto a pedestrian overpass. There was a smoking zone near the steps. It was the one thing she couldn’t get used to, that she was supposed to stand in a designated zone to smoke. She felt like a grade-A gonk, but this was Goro’s home so she respected the rules.</p><p>She leaned against the rails and lit a cigarette. The smoke burned in a way she didn’t know she had missed. She people watched for a bit. They trailed below the overpass like ants. V inhaled deeply. She got it, she truly did, why corp execs always chose the topmost floor. There was nothing more powerful than watching people scurry about, ignorant of your presence, all the while knowing you controlled their very lives. It was mortal godhood. Before Soulkiller, Arasaka owned their bodies. Now they owned their very souls.</p><p>She stubbed the butt out in an ashtray. It had been a bad idea, rekindling old contacts when she wasn’t sure how or when Arasaka would be watching. With V-ICE up, at least they were out of her phonebook. She entered a number from memory. She knew exactly who to call first.</p><p>It was picked up on the second ring. “Who are you and how did you get this number?”</p><p>“Meredith, it’s me.”</p><p>The request for video went through. The woman in the feed was dressed in a white bathrobe with her hair smoothed back. It was late in Night City but V knew she wouldn’t be asleep.</p><p>“Well fuck me sideways. Look who finally decided to show.” Meredith nursed a tumbler of scotch on her lap. It was her preferred drink. Aside from a new line of chrome down her left temple, she looked exactly like how V remembered. “It’s been a year and change. Word on the rumour mill is your old employer snatched you.”</p><p>“Current employer, for once the mill isn’t full of shit.”</p><p>A stone-cold Militech bitch, she and Meredith had gotten off on the wrong foot. Things somehow worked out between them. During her quest for the flathead, she had paid with the bugged chip, fried Royce, and found some dirt on Anthony Gilchrist in the Maelstrom database. He had indeed been the mole. Meredith couldn’t have known at the time. She was acting purely on instinct. It was impressive, so V backed up the coms between Royce and Gilchrist and handed her the shard on a platter. One thing led to another. After their one-off tryst in No-Tell Motel, she’d say they were chooms.</p><p>“I called to give you a wave from the grave.” V lit another cigarette. She savoured it this time, letting the smoke sit in her lungs before puffing it out. “Got any gigs for me?”</p><p>“Still a ghost and you’re already taking jobs?”</p><p>V didn’t need video to know Meredith smirked. It wasn’t about money, the other woman knew. She could jack into an ATM and it’d spit Eddies until the streets got flooded. She did it for presence, for connections, for the right to a seat at the table. There was no dignity in being a nobody.</p><p>Meredith swirled the scotch in her tumbler. She gave it some serious thought. “The line secure?”</p><p>“Always.”</p><p>“It’ll be a big one.”</p><p>“Hit me.”</p><p>Meredith bit her bottom lip. She looked over her shoulder, as if she was afraid of being overheard in her own home. “Thanks to you I got a raise, so I’m putting my ass on the line here. The higher-ups at Militech are planning something…something big. Yurinobu was on the verge of starting the fifth corporate war, got replaced by his old man last second. You knew about this?”</p><p>“Yeah.” How could she not. She had been the one who put Saburo there. She hadn’t told Meredith about the chip or her contract. Considering who held the leash to their respective collars, it was for the best.</p><p>“V, I don’t know about this engram crap, freaks me out.” Meredith took a long sip of her scotch. “Freaks the board out more. Can you imagine? Old man Arasaka, <em>immortal</em>.”</p><p>“Bad news for Militech.”</p><p>“Can’t get much worse. The board has been thinking, scheming. From what I’ve seen they’re serious this time. They have all the resources, but they need an in.”</p><p>“A mole.”</p><p>“I know this is asking a lot, but I can get you a chip. All you need to do is break us in when the time comes, just like last time.”</p><p>“Yeah? As I recall Maelstrom started shootin’ last time.” V wished she had her own drink, something strong, like a shot of Tequila, or seven. “Meri, I can’t, ‘saka’s off-limits.”</p><p>Meredith lit a cigarette too. She gave it a slow drag. “Don’t tell me you’re getting soft. What happened to the rebel V of old? Rewind twelve months you’d bend over backwards to fuck ‘em.”</p><p>“They have me by the balls.”</p><p>“I call bullshit. My counter-intel told me you’re more slippery than an eel in the sewers. If Militech can’t catch you, ‘saka’s got nothing.”</p><p>V pinched the bridge of her nose. She regretted having this conversation on the overpass now. “I can’t give you details, but my sitch is fucked. They…they have something I can’t leave without.”</p><p>Meredith considered it for a moment. Her brows shot up. “This can’t be about the ronin guy.”</p><p>“Meri, he’s not a ronin.”</p><p>“You’ve got to be joking. You’re doing all this for a guy?” Meredith threw back her scotch. She slammed the tumbler down and leaned in. She looked like she was about to strangle her through the screen. “Remember what you told me that night at the motel? You don’t play for frills. You play for keeps. Life fucked you once and you refused to let it happen again. Or have you forgotten?”</p><p>V bit back her excuse. Whatever came out next would be a blatant lie and to say it was insulting. She took in the woman in the video. There was a broken heart tattooed behind Meredith’s ear, the words <em>Never Again</em> below it. V hadn’t gotten around to asking what it meant. The answer seemed obvious.</p><p>“Come to Militech. I don’t care what ‘saka’s got on you. We can make it disappear. You can be Rache fucking Bartmoss minus the bounty. You’re the one friend I have in this biz. I can’t—I won’t watch you get screwed.” Meredith refused to look at her after that.</p><p>V let out a shaky breath. She was thankful, truly, to have someone who cared about her in the corporate fold. But it was too late. She was already gone.</p><p>“Promise me you’ll think about it,” Meredith said quietly. She didn’t do that often. When she did it always caught V off guard.</p><p>“I will. Take care, Meri. Stay off the powder.”</p><p>The woman on the other end smirked. “Be seeing you, V.”</p><p>The line went dead. V stood there for a while, staring over the rails. Something burned her fingers. The cigarette had fizzed to a stub. She fumbled to put it out. She thought about calling Viktor next, letting him and Misty know she still existed, but the last conversation she had with Misty didn’t end well. The call with Meredith left her drained. She stared at the phone and couldn’t bring herself to dial again.</p><p>She spent the afternoon coding. At this point it was the only thing that could calm her. She could no longer lie to herself. Who was she fooling, thinking that she didn’t have a choice?</p><p>She had a choice. She has had one from the start. She chose to steal the Relic. She chose to betray her friends. She chose to sign the contract. She chose to kill Johnny.</p><p>She tore her jack from the port. She felt sick, as if someone had ripped her chest open and pumped it full of mercury. It was thick, heavy, and refused to set. The liquid metal sploshed inside her, throwing her off balance. She punched the wall, denting the panel there. It hurt like a bitch. She ran some cold water over her knuckles and didn’t bother with a Band-Aid.</p><p>Despite having killed time with coding, it was still too early for dinner. She took out Goro’s keys and fiddled with the cat charm. Why couldn’t he be an asshole? It would make things so much easier. Another fifteen minutes passed in agonizing wait. V couldn’t take it anymore.</p><p>She rummaged through her dresser, finding the perfect little something. When all was prepared she arrived at his door fifteen minutes early. She knocked four times for good measure. Goro would’ve gotten the signal. She pressed her ear to the door. No sound from the other side. Well, Goro gave her the keys to use them.</p><p>[I’m letting myself in.] She texted as she turned the doorknob.</p><p>A tiny piece of paper drifted to the floor, easily missed if she wasn’t looking. It was a common way of testing if people had tampered with the door. For trained security personnel like Goro, it was probably just a distraction. She scanned the entrance with her optics. All clear. Had he cleaned up because he knew she was coming? She’d have to ask what real measures he had against unwanted visitors.</p><p>Building A was where the execs lived. The interior of Goro’s apartment was lux. Traditional timber panelling partitioned the spaces. The floor was Japanese tatami. She left her shoes at the entrance and stepped onto the mats. There was a sunken lounge in the corner and a proper kitchen. A corridor led to what she assumed was the study, bedroom, and bathroom. She stayed in the semi-public areas. Goro struck her as the type to enjoy his privacy. If he wanted, he could show her around. Otherwise she would not be nosy.</p><p>Her phone buzzed again. [I will return shortly.] Goro sent her what must’ve been the most unflattering selfie he could take. It was from an upward angle. His chin took up a third of the shot. He held a bag of groceries with a smile. She stared at the photo. On any other day she would be laughing at it. Today it only bought pain.</p><p>She has never had this before, a relationship. It was always rushed fucking in toilet cubicles, or after she got fancy, rushed fucking in bar booths. How long would this last? How long until Goro got sick of her?</p><p>She pinched herself until the feeling went away. <em>Ouch</em>. There would be a fine bruise on her arm tomorrow. She padded to the kitchen and caught a waft of freshly steamed rice. There were at least two dozen bowls on the counter, filled with peeled vegetables, marinated meats, tofu, and other ingredients. She tried to guess what dishes Goro had planned, but she had lived on a diet of rotated junk in tech school, then salad and caffeine in Arasaka counter-intel. Her home-cooking skills consisted of boiling the kettle.</p><p>She slinked from the kitchen. There was the sound of keys turning at the door. V ducked for the sunken lounge. She hadn’t forgotten why she came early. As the door opened, she threw herself onto the couch face down and pulled up her skirt. She was wearing red lace. The panties framed her ass nicely. With a grin, she buried her face in her arms and pretended to be asleep.</p><p>“V?” Goro called.</p><p>She listened for his footsteps. They were near silent on the tatami. Lucky for her, Goro hadn’t been trying to hide. He went to the kitchen first and dropped off the groceries. She could pinpoint the moment he found her. His froze mid-step. Seconds ticked by in stiff silence. It was unnerving, but she was an experienced runner. She lay perfectly still, slowed her breaths to a steady rhythm and added a small snore. It was a convincing act.</p><p>Just when she thought he didn’t buy it, he made his way to the couch. She gave no indication she had heard him. The ghost of his touch hovered over her thighs. She waited for it, but the unbelievable happened. Goro gently pulled down her skirt until she was decent again. A soft blanket landed on her. He made his way back to the kitchen and closed the door behind him.</p><p>V sat in stunned silence. She had expected to be groped. Then she’d pretend to wake up and they’d have a quick romp before dinner. Never in a million years did she—</p><p>She didn’t know what to think. The blanket smelled like him. She hid her face in it until she could gather her thoughts again. The sound of exhaust muddled the silence. Goro worked as quietly as he could, but if she concentrated, she could hear the clink of dishes. A pan scraped against the burner. Then came the sizzle of oil. She tiptoed to the kitchen and gently pushed the door back. Goro stood in front of the stove, his white dress shirt covered with a black apron. He had rolled up his sleeves and was frying something with a pair of chopsticks.</p><p>“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” The man must’ve had eyes on the back of his head.</p><p>From behind, she wrapped her arms around his waist and looked over his shoulder. “Tempura, fancy.”</p><p>It took one look for him to tense up. She tried to hide her scraped knuckles but it was too late. Goro turned the heat down, took her hand and led her away from the stove. The kitchen was suddenly too small. He had her trapped between him and the counter. Before she could object, he lifted her by her thighs. She sat on the counter with him between her legs. A crease formed between his brows. The way he looked at her, it wasn’t sexual but somehow no less intimate.</p><p>“What happened?” Goro asked.</p><p>She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Nothing. Accident, that’s all.”</p><p>He went quiet at that. She snuck a peek. While dormant, Goro’s eyes were silver, custom optics, courtesy of Arasaka. A blue light washed over her. “Are you <em>scanning</em> me?” She tried to wiggle from his hold.</p><p>“A necessity. This will only take a moment.” It was over before she could fight it. The light faded, and the crease between his brows deepened. “I must make sure you are not injured.”</p><p>“Come on, Night City veteran like me, jumped in Tokyo? Never in a million years.”</p><p>“V, these streets are far from safe. You have not yet been to the slums. Remnants of the Steel Dragon, a gang founded by Yurinobu are still at large. There are anti-Arasaka fanatics, suicide bombings—”</p><p>“Goro, I’m fine. I was frustrated, punched my own apartment wall.”</p><p>She slipped. Goro caught it dead centre. “Why?”</p><p>“No reason, just—rough day, can we drop it, please?” She bucked against him. Goro reluctantly let go. She hopped off the counter and opened her arms wide. “You have a five-course meal planned here. Can I help?”</p><p>Goro watched her a moment longer. She could tell he wanted to press the issue. She crossed her arms and gave him a <em>look</em>. Between the two of them, it was Goro who backed down.</p><p>“I trust you won’t set fire to my kitchen?” Goro handed her a second apron.</p><p>“No promises.” She let him tie the back for her.</p><p>Despite her non-existent culinary skills, she was an expert at following instructions. She worked the knife deftly, dicing and slicing while Goro took care of the pan work. They made a perfect team. If felt just like old times, except they were no longer planning a chain of suicide missions.</p><p>She had been kidding about the five-course meal. As it turned out the final product was far superior. It was kaiseki, with eight dishes plus miso soup, each served in a small bowl, the portions carefully balanced. She helped Goro set up the table. It was such an impressive army of foods she even snapped a photo.</p><p>When the time came to eat, her hand made a beeline for the yakitori. Skewered in a neat row were pieces of real marinated chicken and green scallion. It had been grilled to perfection, finished with a light soy glaze. No wonder Goro considered the Japantown version sawdust and plastic.</p><p>“My god…” V hummed as she chewed. “Marry me.”</p><p>Goro’s eyes shot up from his rice.</p><p>“Uh—I mean…marinated meat! The yakitori is delicious.” That was a terrible save. Her surgeon must’ve skimped on the memory boost, because her deck felt like it was about to combust.</p><p>To make matters worse, Goro appeared to be genuinely considering it. “We will discuss this after dinner,” he said as he took a bite of tempura eggplant.</p><p>Not sure if he was joking, she attacked the dishes with renewed vigour. By the time she stuffed herself with food, she had assumed the exchange was behind them. Goro cleared the table while she massaged her belly. He brewed some green tea to help her digest.</p><p>She wrapped her fingers around the cup and savoured the warmth. Goro sat beside her. He held out his hand and without thinking, she placed hers in them. His hands were cold, she warmed them up nicely. He waited until she finished her tea to speak.</p><p>“V-san, those implants…”</p><p>“You mean these?” She tapped her temple. “Made some upgrades while you were gone.”</p><p>“I see, but they are not the ones I speak of.” Goro flipped her hand over, exposing her forearm. Chrome lines ran up her wrist, wrapping around her elbows and biceps. They were purely ornamental, complemented the lines of her subdermal armour. She got them engraved at a local ripperdoc.</p><p>“I apologise for the assumption. To my knowledge, your old possessions became Arasaka property. I tried to secure them for you, but to no avail.”</p><p>She finally got where this was going. Goro was right. Everything that made up the V of old now came with an Arasaka stamp. She had been smart, made arrangements with a storage facility before she met with Hanako. It safe-kept the things she didn’t want falling into ‘saka hands, but her old account was forever out of her reach. She doubted they needed the Eddies. It was just another way to tug the collar.</p><p>“Okay, I admit it. I borrowed some New Yen, permanently.” V shrugged. What was the harm? She took them from someone who wouldn’t miss ‘em. Probably deserved it too, the old prick.</p><p>Goro traced his thumb over the markings. This time it was she who waited. He was working up the courage to say something important. She could feel it.</p><p>“I grew up in the slums of Chiba-11. I have many fond memories of childhood, but none of that place. My father was a cook, spent his life in a filthy back alley kitchen. I had promised myself to never become that. Chiba-11 was an unforgiving place. Once I had been desperate to leave I…joined the Yakuza. I committed terrible crimes, brought great shame to myself and my family. My grandmother spent many nights alone, weeping in silence.” Goro pushed the words out one by one. He spoke slowly, as if he was exerting himself. V had always known he looked down on thieves. She hadn’t known why.</p><p>“Arasaka ended that life. I remember standing in line. My hands burned from the chemicals in the canal, but my shirt was clean. Had I not been chosen…I do not know what I would have done. From that day forward I vowed to never take what is not mine again. In our line of work, without honour, without principles, we are nothing. I was once a rabid animal, blinded by greed, sank my teeth into anything that came close.” He held her knuckles up to his lips and kissed it.</p><p>“V-san, everything mine, is yours. I pray that is enough. If it is not, I will work harder. In Night City, you have taken great care of me. Now please, let me do the same for you.”</p><p>His eyes shone with a light she could not name. She has never had a man look at her like that. He did not intend to persuade. He simply peered inside her, saw the dark void where her soul should be, and held it in his hands. He cradled it, caressed it, kissed it with such love and tenderness like the void was something worthy of protection.</p><p>How could she deny him?</p><p>“I won’t steal again, not if I can help it. I’m sorry,” she whispered.</p><p>Goro looked relieved. “Do not apologise to me. You have wronged yourself most of all.”</p><p>They stayed like that for a while. He kissed her knuckles again before taking her teacup to the sink. She felt his eyes on her, <em>Johnny</em>. This time it was different. There were no condescending jabs, no mocking laugh. He only watched her with tar black eyes. His face was smeared with soot, his Kevlar vest pumped full of lead. Those injuries came from his assault on Arasaka Tower.</p><p>Thousands of lives perished that day. He had won the battle and didn’t live to lose the war. Then she happened. They brought each other back from the grave just to fail all over again.</p><p>A chill crept up her spine. Goro spoke of honour. He spoke of principles and loyalty and truthfulness to oneself. Little did he realise she had already spat on all those values he would give his life for. She had sworn vengeance against Arasaka. Her duty had been to aid Johnny. Her loyalty had been promised to her friends. Viktor, who pulled her back from death’s door; Misty, who guided her through tough times; Mama Welles, who treated her like a daughter despite that she had gotten her son killed.</p><p>She has arrived at a new chapter of her life, but how could she turn the page while staring at her unclean hands? What right did she have to pretend that she had any honour left? And Goro, was he aware of the ghost she had become, or had he fallen in love with a woman, a woman who was simply no longer there.</p><p>If the V of Night City died on that space station…who was she?</p><p>Goro was in a good mood. He hummed a lullaby as he loaded dishes into the dishwasher. Johnny had disappeared into the void, leaving her with the thoughts he so unkindly jammed into her head. V hid her knuckles under her legs. She sat alone at the table, her heart cold as stone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The Wheel of Fortune. The danger is greater than you think. It will come suddenly, without warning. Conflict is unavoidable." – Misty Olszewski</p><p>There are no wrong decisions, only ones we can or cannot live by.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Chariot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>True to his words, Goro gave her access to his bank account the next day. The number of digits convinced her it was his main account. V didn’t dare touch it. She would not stoop so low as to spend a man’s hard-earned salary on her vanity. There had been a Jinguji blazer she set her eyes on, new season with lilac trims and Armadillo lining. She gave it a hard look and deleted it from her online cart.</p><p>They weren’t even married and he was already making an honest woman out of her. Aside from the account, she hadn’t known what to do with the key either. Goro hadn’t asked for it back. Her own apartment key was stuffed unceremoniously in her bag, but his was different. Gaining access to his home was a symbol of trust. There wasn’t a chance in digi-hell she’d lose it and compromise his safety. After some thought, she bought a silver chain from the jeweller and threaded the key through it. She wore it around her neck like a pendant. It was stupid and honestly a little pathetic, but no one was going to know if she kept her mouth shut.</p><p>The morning after saw her very first appointment with Hellman. She had been instructed to visit research and development. She didn’t get what they were testing for. She was stable, had been that way since the day she was discharged, but she agreed to the appointment because it was Arasaka that built the body. As a passable techie, she could run preliminary diagnostics, but her true talent lay in the field of netrunning. Arasaka’s experiment of weaving an inorganic brain with an organic body was out of her league. Maybe there were things she had overlooked. If they wanted to do routine maintenance, it was fine by her.</p><p>Hellman awaited her in a specialist suite. It was odd they hadn’t sent her to the med bay. She scanned the rigs. They were set up similar to the space station. She lay flat on the operation table. The surface was mobile and slid forth as an assistant strapped her in. It carried her into a dark tube. Blue light washed over her. Before she could react, her operating system flared up. She was hit with a warning error. It almost felt like another Relic malfunction. She passed out as she bucked against the table.</p><p>“Uh…fuck.” She came to her senses with a killer migraine. She was out of the tube. Hellman sat next to her. He typed on his laptop, his expression unreadable. “I’m not dying again, am I?”</p><p>“Quite the opposite. Your engram must be calibrated with your body. We have done everything we can to remove the construct, but there are remnants of his persona tangled with yours, as I’m sure you are aware,” Hellman said without taking his eyes off his laptop.</p><p>V sat slowly. She traced her fingers down her wrist jack. “Yeah, I guess…Thanks.”</p><p>Hellman gave her a look of surprise. There was something else she had wanted to say, something less…but her brain was muddled and the thought slipped from her. The side effects didn’t last long. She was released thirty minutes after the scan. The assistant reminded her that she was due to return in two weeks’ time.</p><p>Her first day back at Arasaka was a slow one. She was given recon work and blitzed through the tasks in half an hour. She spent her lunch break exploring the Tokyo HQ. Rumour had it that the Tokyo HQ had been what Arasaka modelled every sequential tower after. They wanted a uniform front, one of equally high standard from no matter which city a client walked in.</p><p>In theory, the Night City HQ that she spent many sleepless nights should be exactly the same. However she was a firm believer that nothing beat the original. Considering her situation, the sentiment was rather ironic. Reality proved her right. Showcased under the tower’s dark tinted glass and raw steel beams were priceless works of art. A tasteful blend of modern and contemporary Japanese sculpture, the interior displayed Arasaka’s unparalleled wealth. She has never seen such an impressive private collection.</p><p>A shell could be replicated, substance could not.</p><p>She wandered through the building, unsure of what to do with that information. A lean figure emerged from the end of the hall. He was flanked by two men. She didn’t pay him much attention, probably another self-important exec rushing to the next meeting. Then she felt eyes on her. She snapped to the source. Through a curtain of black hair, a pair of ice blue optics met hers. She did a double take. <em>No way</em>.</p><p>“Oda!” She waved at the figure.</p><p>He tore his gaze away but they had made eye contact. Oda scowled as if he was angry at himself for getting caught. He approached her and bowed deeply. “V.”</p><p>She rubbed the back of her neck. That was a serious bow. The man before her appeared as stern and reserved as ever. He wore a black suit typical of Arasaka security personnel. She and Oda hadn’t seen each other since the assault on Arasaka Tower. “Fancy meeting you here, how have you been?”</p><p>There was a strange expression on Oda’s face, like the one Goro wore when she asked if he was okay. They weren’t chooms, but after blasting through a private army together, at least they were no longer enemies.</p><p>“I am alive…” Oda thought about it. He added: “and well.”</p><p>“Good to hear it.” V shuffled on her heels. The two men flanking Oda observed their exchange with thinly veiled curiosity. “I guess you’re off to somewhere important. Wanna grab a drink after work?”</p><p>“We are <em>not</em> friends.”</p><p>“Don’t have to be friends to grab a drink.” V propped a hand on her hip. She pulled the muscles on her face into a controlled smirk, enough to rouse frustration, but not enough to be insulting. “I’ll make it worth your time. Don’t you wanna know how I dropped you at the parade?”</p><p>Oda clenched his fists. “You are a skilled Netrunner. That is all.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.” V made a show out of checking her nails. “Tik-tok, Mr. Non-runner.”</p><p>If looks could kill V was sure she would’ve combusted under the heat of Oda’s glare. Oda clenched his jaw so hard she was concerned he’d crack his teeth. “Date and time?”</p><p>“The Black Rose, 7pm tomorrow tonight. You ask all your dates out like this?” V swore she saw the case of his mantis blades pop. “I’m joking, I’m joking. Jeezus…relax a little.”</p><p>Oda gave her a curt nod and walked away. His companions looked impressed. No wonder the man was so stiff. He doesn’t get his buttons pushed enough.</p><p>V returned to her work station. Oda reminded her of something she had wanted to do since the parade. She hadn’t known he would show up to the raid and therefore missed that opportunity. This time she had twenty-four hours to prepare. She logged onto her account from the storage facility in Night City. Paying for premium afforded her unparalleled service. A few emails later and the item was on its way.</p><p>She kicked back in her seat and bulldozed through her other tasks. Once she got over the fact she had sold her soul in the most literal way possible, working at Arasaka was alright. Provided that she didn’t have to speak with any actual Arasakas, or board members, or executives, or anyone with a stick up their ass and that receptionist down the hall…</p><p>Okay, so there were a lot of things to get over, but once she did those too, her return to the corpo fold was alright. Most of the employees at Tokyo HQ were polite. Since she was a senior runner, she was even somewhat respected. It wasn’t common knowledge she had propped the company up in 2077 like a leg of disposable chopsticks, but those who knew gave her the passing nod. Another bonus was no one had yet tried to dismember her when she gave them a piece of her mind, which she kinda missed, if she was to be honest. Life in Tokyo HQ was a life of polite detachment. The knives were never out in the open, not unless she was already on the floor, bleeding from a thousand cuts.</p><p>Goro had viewed her latest rendezvous with scepticism. She was, in his words, ‘getting into trouble again.’ Goro’s relationship with his apprentice had been rocky since they returned to Japan. Thankfully it was on the mend. She was happy for them. Working at Arasaka hadn’t given Goro many friends. Contacts, he had pages after pages, but they were not people he could count on in a bind.</p><p>She responded by listing the things Oda had done to make her attempt worthwhile, agreeing to meet Goro while he was accused of treason, allowing them to leave the city, being angry at them when they hadn’t, in fact, left the city…so on and so forth. Goro’s final text was an exasperated symbol emoji, followed by the line that she always saw the best in people. She had no idea what he was on about.</p><p>When next evening came, V arrived at the Black Rose fifteen minutes early. She placed the package on the bar and ordered a margarita. A gust of wind roused the hairs on her back. She set her drink down and ducked leisurely, missing the hand that stopped short of her would-be temple.</p><p>“Can you get any more childish?” she deadpanned.</p><p>“And you have eyes on the back of your head?” Oda sat on the stool beside her.</p><p>V responded by winking her glowing optics. Oda looked up. The camera above the bar tilted in response. She exited the surveillance interface and raised her glass. “Indeed I do.”</p><p>Oda looked away. He seemed to be stuck in a perpetual state between annoyance and sobriety. Tonight, that had to change. She waved the bartender over and finished her margarita in one swig. “I’ll have another one.”</p><p>“Gin, neat,” Oda said after her.</p><p>Their drinks came swiftly. The two of them made an odd pair. V peered at Oda from behind the salted rim of her glass. She was used to Goro’s impeccable outfits. The man stormed Arasaka Tower in a <em>white</em> suit. Her taste reflected his. She was in a fawn dinner jacket, cream pencil dress and sky-high stilettos. In private, Oda leaned toward the comfort side of neo-militarism. He donned a black aramid-weave turtleneck, slim-fit cargo pants and combat boots. It was less formal than she had expected.</p><p>As she studied Oda, thoughts that hadn’t occurred to her before surfaced. He was young. The security uniform and nonchalance hid it well, but she and Oda couldn’t be more than a few years apart. His style showed that too. Thrice now he had preferred tactical gear over the restrictive Arasaka three-piece.</p><p>They were roughly the same age and worked for the same corp but their mindset could not be more different. She had seen him as a brainwashed ‘saka dog. To him, she probably belonged in the same category as mud stains. On that account they were even. At Night City, she would’ve been content if their paths never crossed again. Then life threw her one hell of a curve ball.</p><p>“Alright, first things first, got something here that belongs to you.” V pushed the package toward him. She hadn’t forgotten what this meeting was all about.</p><p>Oda regarded her suspiciously. He took a sip of gin and made no attempt to open the package. V fought the urge to roll her eyes. She pulled the package back and opened it herself. Inside the black freight box was a sheathed katana. Its handle glistened with use. Engraved onto the dark surface were the words <em>Jinchu-Maru</em>.</p><p>Oda drew in a sharp breath. She took the katana from the box and held it up to him. “Listen, the streets gave me sticky fingers, but I never meant to steal a samurai’s sword. It has special meaning, doesn’t it? All that went through my head at the parade was I could use a katana, so I nicked it, felt real bad afterwards. So here it is, Jinchu-Maru, back in the hands of its rightful owner.”</p><p>Oda accepted the katana. He ran his fingers down the glistening hilt. “I am not a samurai,” he said quietly.</p><p>Weird, Goro had seemed hung up on that too. V gave master and sword a moment to reunite before speaking again, this time sheepishly. “There was also the BD wreath, had a real pretty name, too pretty for Night City. It got crushed in a gig. And the bulletproof vest…let’s just say it <em>expired</em>.”</p><p>Oda grimaced. The dim bar light hid it well, but her optics revealed the red on his cheeks. “You defeated me, and then <em>stripped</em> me.”</p><p>“Hey, in my defence I left you with your fatigues, could’ve taken off with those too.”</p><p>Oda downed the rest of his gin. “Hey, bartender! Another!”</p><p>“Wow, chill dude, does all Arasaka security order like they’re shouting over techno? You took one straight out of Goro’s book.” V chuckled at her recollection of Goro in Japantown. He loved making himself heard.</p><p>Oda paused at that. “Takumura-san…how is he?”</p><p>“Why don’t you ask him yourself? He missed you, you know.”</p><p>“He does?”</p><p>“Yeah, moped around for weeks. He’d never admit it, but it was him who asked me to spare you at the parade. Said he could trust you too. I doubted you would cooperate, and I was right, but he believed in you.” V bit the salted rim. There was a hint of lime juice. Delicious, just like the sight of a prey walking into her trap. “We’re burning moonlight. Now that the sword is in safe hands…There’s a saying in Night City, you don’t know someone unless you throw back a few shots with them.”</p><p>“You made that up.”</p><p>“Maybe, but do you have another NC choom to confirm that?”</p><p>Oda set Jinchu-Maru on the counter. He mulled over his gin. “You will regret this suggestion. I have metabolic enhancements. Alcohol has little effect on me.”</p><p>V waved the bartender over. “Try me, hot shot.”</p><p>There was something about overly stiff men, that the stiffer they were the crazier they got when they snapped. At first Oda had been reluctant. He clung onto what was left of his dignity with the skin of his teeth, but her years in counter-Intel hadn’t been for nothing. Once she found a roundabout way of linking the outcome with his honour, oh boy was it on.</p><p>They nearly drank the bar dry, had so many shots of tequila Johnny himself would be proud. When neat drinks didn’t cut it anymore they started mixing. The bartender couldn’t keep up. Oda flooded him with New Yen and he gave them access behind the bar. She made a killer zombie cocktail. Any sane person was only supposed to have two per night. She stopped counting after five.</p><p>By the time they walked, no, limped out of the Black Rose Oda was a slobbering mess. Goro had to pick them up. He drifted the Shion onto the sidewalk and did a full combat scan of the area. When he found no anomalies, he rushed over to them. The disgust on his face was skin deep. He was worried sick.</p><p>“Relax, there’s no one out to get us.” V leaned against the wall and rested her head against the cool surface. She watched Goro hull Oda from the steps, chuckling when the two men stumbled.</p><p>It shook Oda from his trance. He threw his arms around Goro, told him how very sorry he was for having doubted him, how much he appreciated his mentorship, how much his friendship meant to him so on and so forth. He screamed Japanese nursery rhymes as Goro stuffed him into the back of the Shion. He was so loud it turned even Goro red. V near pissed herself laughing. She wished she had a BD rig because she was never letting either of them forget that.</p><p>“V, get in the car.” Goro grunted as she tried to rein in her laughter. She failed miserably. They stood on the sidewalk for another minute before she could push herself from the wall.</p><p>“Nah, you get him home. Think I’ll stroll for a bit. Get some wind on my face.” She threw Jinchu-Maru on top of Oda and slammed the door shut. Despite her ‘ganic body, her engram wasn’t capable of getting drunk. She felt giddy, but nowhere as shitfaced as Oda.</p><p>Goro studied her carefully. His gaze shifted to Oda then back to her. “I will call you within thirty minutes.”</p><p>V waved him off. She lit a cigarette as Goro raced off with Oda in the back seat, still very much singing. She watched his tail lights fade into the night. With a deep breath, she looked up. The skies were clear tonight. There were no stars, too much light-pollution. The ink black canvas glowed with shades of neon from the adverts. For the first time in as long as she could remember, things felt alright.</p><p>She walked with no destination in mind. The streets were empty at this hour. Her heels clicked against the pavement, sending faint echoes through the darkness. She couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face. Oda, what a guy. She was glad they cleared the bad blood between them.</p><p>She took a slow drag of her cigarette. Her feet took her to Arasaka HQ. The tower appeared yet more foreboding at night. There were no tourists at this hour. Deserted was its once populated courtyard. The absence of chatter peeled back the glamour shrouding the facility. At its core, Arasaka Tower was devoid of embellishments save for the one that mattered most. A white backlit logo of the corporation washed a cold light over everything at its feet. In Night City, there had been the holographic glow of ryukin fish from Japantown. Digitised cherry blossom petals fell through her palm. But here, there was nothing.</p><p>Nothing but Arasaka.</p><p>V shivered. She stubbed out the cigarette in another smoking zone. She hated this place, had hated it ever since she was old enough to understand what hatred was. At one point, when she was young and stupid, she had mistaken the feeling for envy. She wanted the shiny AVs, the suits, the fine foods, the luxury apartments. She wanted it all and she was willing to step over anyone to get it.</p><p>She couldn’t beat the system, so she joined it. Johnny had said she was the product of a world fucked sideways as well as its enabler. She grew up with nothing. The corps were the ones who put her there. Now she worked for them, putting more people in the ass end of capitalist hell. She helped them fortify a world where a person’s worth was defined by their monthly quota, a world where people were afraid to fall sick, a world where a person’s birth decided their fate, and all their struggles, all their perseverance meant nothing.</p><p>For a while, she forced herself to feel happy, but no amount of expensive alcohol could drown the fact that she was alone, with no family, no partner, not even a friend to call her own. Nothing she gained from that world satisfied her. When she went to sleep, she stared at the ceiling thinking this couldn’t possibly be the way things were supposed to be.</p><p>She took in the logo again, a circle, enclosing three prongs which ended in blunt dots: security, banking, manufacturing. Why did she come crawling back to them? Even now, in her precious moment of freedom she had walked here without thinking.</p><p>“Ugh…” V clutched her head. A sharp pain tore her thoughts apart. The next thing she knew she was flat on her back convulsing against the floor. Bouts of electricity coursed through her as if an enemy Netrunner had nuked her with Short Circuit. When she could move again she hauled herself onto the edge of a planter.</p><p>
  <em>Well, well, well. Aren’t you a sorry sight.</em>
</p><p>She looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see a stone-cold rocker covered in bruises, but she was alone and her thoughts remained choppy. She waited for her operating system to reboot.</p><p>What…was that?</p><p>It took her some time to link the flare-up with her maintenance session. Any other day she would’ve done it faster than she could blink. It was hard to gauge her state of mind, so she tried to breach a surveillance camera. She timed herself. It took over nine goddam seconds. She’d have her ass handed to her in an assault. She practiced until she could get her breach time down to normal. The benchmark was useful. She wouldn’t trust her judgement otherwise. With a sharper mind, she went back to thinking.</p><p>Something was off. She’d have to be lobotomised not to feel it. What has Hellman done to her?</p><p>She ran a full system diagnostics again. It came up clear. Just as she contemplated the possibility of dismantling her own brain, her phone rang.</p><p>“Oda is asleep. Are you home?” It was Goro. He sounded exhausted.</p><p>“No… No, I’m still out.” She dragged a hand down her face, feeling the tug of the skin there. Her feet bounced against the pavement. Should she tell him? “Goro, I—”</p><p>“You should get home soon. There is work tomorrow.” She clamped her mouth shut. The sound of clashed teeth thundered in the dead of night. Goro moved back in the feed. “I am sorry. Did you want to say something?”</p><p>“No. I mean—yeah, you’re right. It’s getting late. Guess I’ll be going.” She pushed herself from the planter. She was still a little lightheaded, but she planted her feet and steadied herself.</p><p>Goro nodded. “Good. We will speak tomorrow.”</p><p>He looked like he was about to hang up. Without thinking, she called for him. “Goro.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>His look of surprise was all that was needed to tell her she had made a mistake. Seconds ticked by with no response. V hung up. She fell back on the planter and buried her face in her hands.</p><p>What the hell was she doing? Good job scaring him off. It must be her engram glitching again. She didn’t have to look to see the sneer on Johnny’s face. She flipped him the finger.</p><p>What was she going to do now? What could she do? Whatever Arasaka tweaked, they tweaked covertly. All she had to work with were unpredictable malfunctions and her own gut feeling. Could she even put together evidence to prove foul play? How would she get others on board? Did anyone still care? And Goro, it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It was just when it came to Arasaka, he was too unsuspecting. He could see them do no wrong. Or worse, see the wrong and come up with an excuse on their behalf. She couldn’t tell him about her suspicions. It was too risky for the both of them.</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, that’s called not trusting him. Dumbass.</em>
</p><p>V took a deep breath.<em> I swear, Johnny, one of these days I’m going to nuke you from my brain.</em></p><p>Before entering Mikoshi, the only thing she had that was immune to theft had been her thoughts. Now even that might not be safe. She eventually gathered the strength to walk back. The warmth of alcohol has faded. She was chilled to the bone. As she trudged through the streets of Tokyo, an irrepressible thought surfaced.</p><p>She missed Night City. She missed…home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“To ride in The Chariot is to experience highs and lows – ups and downs.” – excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>When I wrote this chapter I couldn't' help but think of the absurdity of the looting system. Poor Oda. He was defeated and then stripped... V showed him no mercy. ;D</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. ACT II: The Tower</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took her until the day before her next appointment to find a window. There was a development meeting scheduled late in the afternoon. RnD would be mostly empty. It was as good a chance as she was going to get.</p><p>As far as V was concerned, she was in the clear. Her engram had stabilised and she hasn’t had a malfunction in days. But as the saying went, paranoia saved lives. She sat at her station and checked off her tasks until the meeting began. From there, she stood calmly.</p><p>The nearest restroom was on her end of the hall. She was not alone in the corridor. Two execs chatted about the upcoming internal review. She held up her phone and pretended to be on a call. The execs left when they noticed the extra pair of ears. After the corridor was clear, she made way for the restroom. At the same time the door opened, she activated her daemon in the Arasaka network. It switched the feed from the only camera that could see her to one that was a day old, taken at the same time, from the same position, with no one else in the corridor. It was a seamless transition. In the feed, the V of yesterday entered the restroom. She wouldn’t come out for another twenty minutes.</p><p>The V of current ignored the door that was wide open. She made a sharp right turn, stayed close to the walls and avoided anyone that headed her way. It was an easy route. At this hour most of the employees were at their desks. Unless it was gossip-mongering, corpo rats weren’t known for chit-chat. They were all too busy scurrying to their next place to be. She strolled through the tower, her heels silent in the shadows. With seventeen minutes left, she stopped before the doors to RnD.</p><p>She could cause a mass surveillance blackout, but then she might as well shoot up the whole floor while she was at it. Security would sniff the anomaly in a milisec. There was a camera on the other side, barely in her line of sight if she peered through the glass on the door. With minimal difficulty, she breached the feed. Two lab coats worked in the nearest research station. They had an obstructed view of the door, sneaking past them would be simple. What concerned her were the guards. There were three in the zone. One of them manned the front door while another two patrolled the corridor. She could time herself to avoid the patrols. The stationary guard was a problem.</p><p>If this had been one of her gigs in Night City, she’d reset his system and be on her way, but her aim today was reconnaissance only. No one could suspect a thing, let alone know their system had been tampered with. There was one thing left to try. It was her last resort in any job because in order for it to work, she had to count on the other party being an idiot. She scanned the room beyond the doors. There was a kitchenette beside the research station. A coffee machine rested on the bench. She uploaded a disjoined chain of commands and the machine began to spurt out coffee.</p><p>“Hey, any of you ordered this?” the guard asked.</p><p>The lab coats barely glanced at it. The guard grunted and strutted toward the machine. At the same second she unlocked the door and slipped in, narrowly avoiding the patrols.</p><p>She snuck into the specialist suite. She hadn’t been this nervous since she watched Goro jump onto Hanako’s float. As soon as the doors sealed, she began to scan the rigs. She documented them in agonising detail, took time with each and every screw. After she catalogued the hardware she jacked in to check their soft. She had allotted herself ten minutes in cyberspace. She crunched through the codes and leaned back in disbelief.</p><p>There was nothing. She was among state-of-the-art equipment used for diagnosing patients. There were components she couldn’t make head or tail of, but if Arasaka had tried to alter her, there must be traces of the software left behind. The rigs came up squeaky clean, much like the scans she performed on herself.</p><p>A cold pit festered in her stomach. She had seen her share of cyberpsychosis. Could she be the one losing it? She was only pushing twenty per cent chrome, but in some ways, she was less human than any of the victims she had turned over to Regina George. None of them ran with an artificial brain. She slumped on the chair Hellman had used in their consultation. What if she was the one going mad? Should she tell Hellman about it? She reflected on her recent behaviour. Had she been acting more paranoid, more violent?</p><p>She rested her cheek on the stand. A top secret RnD lab was no place for an existential crisis. If anyone found her they’d shoot on sight. She tried to pull herself back together. At the corner of her eye was a data port.</p><p>How…interesting.</p><p>She pulled the jack from the port and fiddled with the plastic cord. If she remembered correctly, this was where Hellman had plugged his laptop. She jumped from her seat. The cords were embedded into the stand. It would be troublesome if not for her pair of Kiroshi Mk.4’s. With some effort, she was able to locate the cords without dismantling the stand. She traced them below the plastic casing. It ran all the way beneath the floor, across the room, and into the tunnel she had entered.</p><p>All the hairs on her back stood. She wanted to do another round of scans on the tunnel, but her time was up. She slipped into the public restroom with seconds to spare. When she returned to her desk, her shirt was clammy with cold sweat. Her unauthorised tour had left her with more questions than answers. It worsened her jitters, but she still had no evidence.</p><p>She sleepwalked through the rest of her day. She was assigned another hit, this time on a Biotechnica suit. She didn’t register anything from the briefing. When the work day ended, she trekked to a motel on the other end of the city. She hadn’t felt like returning to her apartment. What was the point in going from one Arasaka compound to another?</p><p>The motel room was old and shitty and reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Even that was a step up from Sunset. At least there were no used needles. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at Goro’s contact.</p><p>Johnny had been right about one thing. She was a stranger in stranger lands. Deep in Tokyo, Goro was the only person with her best interests at heart, but when it came to Arasaka… Could she trust him? Could she count on him to turn against his employer, the people who fed him and clothed him, for her?</p><p>Who was she to him anyway?</p><p>The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to dry heave against the carpet. He had been the one who persuaded her to sign the contract. If it had been Hellman who came to her on that space station she’d have spat on his face. Arasaka knew that. They used that. And the access to his apartment and bank account… Sure, they had built rapport in Night City, but weren’t things moving a little too quickly? It was almost as if he wanted to keep her in his line of sight, monitor her spending—</p><p>No no no. It wasn’t fair to think of him that way. She trusted Goro like he trusted her.</p><p><em>Then what are you waiting for? Dial. </em>Johnny sat on the sill of the open window. Moonlight pierced him, spilling onto the carpet in a clean square. She knew nothing was there. Her senses told her otherwise. She could feel his presence in the back of her skull, a bruised and bloodied rocker brimming with hatred. Gone were the glitches that pixelated his engram. He was smoke, ash, an old wound that refused to heal. Despite Hellman’s efforts he seemed to be getting clearer by the day. Or had Hellman lied about that too?</p><p>She couldn’t meet Johnny’s eyes. <em>It’s more complicated than that. I can’t involve him</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Smart, never trust a ‘saka dog. Too bad you’ve always been one yourself.</em>
</p><p>She jumped for the window. For a moment she forgot she was arguing with a ghost and spoke out loud. “Don’t you fucking start. You know it was this or trust a rogue AI. Where would that have gotten me? Nothing can help me now. Even if I was back in Night City, there was no one else I would’ve called.”</p><p>Johnny smirked. <em>You would’ve called me. You would’ve called your ripperdoc, that chick Panam. We share the same brain. If you want to lie to me, we’re a bottle of tequila short.</em></p><p>“Ugh!” V slammed her hands against the frame. She closed Goro’s contact and ran another round of self-diagnostics. Nothing.</p><p>She didn’t catch a wink of sleep that night. Her mind was wound so tight she could hear it tearing. When morning came she returned to her apartment for a quick change. She shed her day old blouse and selected a navy pinstripe suit. Reinforced with two layers of Armadillo lining, the set paired well with her black combat turtleneck. She opted for navy oxfords today. Stilettos were not made for running. She completed the look with a Kogane No Yume Titanium BD Wreath, the same model as the one she had looted off Oda.</p><p>V studied her reflection. The outfit worked, not only in functionality but in the sense that she looked the part. It would be decisively odd if she abandoned her usual style and showed up to work armed to the teeth. She picked the stray hair from her blazer and smoothed back the lapels one last time.</p><p>If things went south, she would die in these.</p><p>As a precaution, she stuffed a MaxDoc in her blazer pocket. Netrunning in close-quarters was lethal, but if it came down to it, she had more than a few tried and tested tricks.</p><p>Arasaka Tower at morning was a flurry of activities. Her oxfords clicked on the polished stone. She crossed the black atrium and made her way toward RnD. Hellman was already in the suite, his laptop plugged in. He instructed her to lie on the operating table. There were three more in the room, assistants.</p><p><em>Armed</em> assistants, she noted as she scanned them. The same couldn’t be said for her. No Arasaka employee sans security was permitted iron inside the tower. Weekly mass shootings were a bad look. Thankfully, she had everything a runner could ask for: a body decked out in cutting edge chrome and her own goddam mind.</p><p>“What are you waiting for?” Hellman looked up from his work.</p><p>Instead of doing what she was told, she walked around the rigs and sat in front of Hellman. “No more tests.”</p><p>“I beg your pardon?”</p><p>“I said no more tests, had enough on that space station to last another life time. This is me filin’ in to never see your ugly mug again.”</p><p>“I’m afraid that’s not up to you.” Hellman pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Arasaka runs routine maintenance on all company property. That includes you.” He smirked as his optics lit up. She received a copy of her contract. Highlighted in red was the words ‘Buyer: Anders Hellman’.</p><p>“Don’t forget. I own you.”</p><p>V rubbed her knuckles. “Never did have a knack for survival, did you?”</p><p>Hellman’s hand slipped behind the stand. “…Why do you say that?”</p><p>She banished the contract from her optics. The blasted thing had been her latest mistake in a long list of fuck-ups. Helping Arasaka was supposed to shred that list. They had dangled the perfect bait in front of her, the illusion that she could have it all. A functional body, a stable engram, Goro… It had been the perfect balance of health, status, and a lover that could one day become her family.</p><p>Everything she ever wanted, in the palm of her hand.</p><p>She did get those things in the end, but what had it cost to enter this conjured realm? Her joy was false. Could she live with that knowledge? She supposed it didn’t matter. Once Hellman was done, she wouldn’t have to.</p><p>Her scan revealed that Hellman had flattened his hand against a button. She wet her lips. Her heart was hammering like it knew she was about to do something stupid. There was no backing out from this. The path, should she choose to take it was one way only. It would twist and turn until it led both her and her foes to mutually assured destruction.</p><p>V smiled bitterly. In the end there had never been another option. She has always had it in her, this fuck all, self-destructive tendency to take no bullshit when she knew she should let fate take the wheel. Johnny once said they fit together like dick and cunt. He wasn’t wrong.</p><p>“Because sitting before you, is the person who cut through Yorinobu’s private army. She shoved Smashers head where the sun don’t shine, and all you have to say to her is ‘I own you.’”</p><p>She lunged for Hellman. Her fingers were a vice around his skull. Using his hair for grip, she slammed his head into the corner of the stand. A sickening crunch followed. At the same time Hellman released the button for security. Nothing happened. Her background uploads were complete. Three daemons wreaked havoc in the Arasaka system, the first picking apart any personal ICE, the second shutting down all cameras in the area, and the third inducing mass vulnerability to hostile persons within range.</p><p>The assistants drew their handgun. Before any of them could pull the trigger, VYRUS destroyed the safeguards in their cyberware. Neurotoxin leaked into their bloodstream. The first crumpled to the floor, followed quickly by the second. The third managed to fire a single round before she finished him with Short Circuit.</p><p>She had crippled their regional system, but security was bound to hear the gunshot. She pushed Hellman’s limp body from the stand and jacked into his laptop. <em>Offt</em>, thick ICE. She sealed the door remotely and set to work. Her heart touched the back of her throat with every beat, but her hands were steady.</p><p>It wasn’t easy breaking into the private servers of an RnD director. Luckily, she has had plenty of practice. Tech school gave her the tools, Arasaka counter-intel honed them, the streets taught her how to use them. She was in before security could cut down the door. A stream of code scrolled by on her optics. Her grip on the laptop cracked the case.</p><p>She was right. Hellman, the sick fuck, was tweaking her engram. He moved blocks of her persona like she was some inflatable joytoy, implanting artificial adoration to the region that governed her view of Arasaka. That was why it felt like another Relic malfunction. Her engram was malfunctioning. Hellman had been careful, but he underestimated how much hatred she harboured. The result was a stark contrast between what she felt and what she was supposed to feel, a wrestling match between her program and…<em>soul</em>.</p><p>Johnny looked over her shoulder. The floor vibrated with the screech of saw blades grinding against metal. He lit a cigarette and blew the first puff of smoke onto her face. <em>Earth to V, Tokyo’s dumbest lab rat</em>.</p><p>She glared at Hellman’s corpse, wishing suddenly that he hadn’t died such an easy death. God, she felt so stupid. The last time she was duped like this she woke up ass naked in a Scavenger hideout.</p><p>Johnny leaned on the stand and mimicked the sound of the grinders. <em>Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, you better do it quick. Clock’s ticking.</em></p><p>That was all the reminder she needed. She ran to the nearest data port and tore off the faceplate. With the Scavs, she had asked for a ‘refund’, but since that wasn’t an option here, a monumental <em>fuck you</em> would have to do. She jacked in, unleashing every daemon she had perfected over the course of the decade. In cyberspace, she did the hunting.</p><p>A cold smirk crept onto her face as she watched the progress bar climb. Johnny laughed. <em>Don’t bite it until the show is over</em>. He stubbed out his cigarette on Hellman’s still open eye and disappeared. As soon as he was gone, the door flew from its tracks. A squad of elite guards stormed in. The two sweeping her side of the room spotted her and began shooting. A heavy round hit her on the chest. The impact toppled her, nearly ripping her jack from the port. She diverted a portion of her RAM and hit them with VYRUS. Her personalised strand of Contagion, while effective, would not be given enough time to spread. Acting purely on reflex, she uploaded Cripple Movement to the remaining guards, stalling them while VYRUS worked its magic.</p><p>The upload was complete. She jacked out with a grunt and ripped open her blazer. The Armadillo lining had stopped the bullet, but the impact cracked her ribs. Her operating system was burning. She gave it a second to cool down. Her preferred Netdriver always came through for her. Today was no exception.</p><p>The MaxDoc tasted of artificial mint. It soothed her aching ribs. She pushed herself from the floor and went through the guards, shame that none of them carried her preferred weapon. She picked up the closest NOWAKI assault rifle and limped for the door. Reinforcements would be here any second.</p><p>Her daemons began to wreak havoc in earnest. RnD was in shambles. There were system malfunctions everywhere, distracting much of the lab coats. She stuck close to the wall and gunned down anyone who tried to stop her. There was a mass surveillance blackout in the area. Security had lost track of her. She took the elevator down to maintenance floor and slipped out the back door.</p><p>Her remaining sliver of rational thought told her to flee Tokyo, immediately, preferably yesterday, but the dominating portion of her brain, the portion that had completed the transformation from cold disdain to seething fury bought her to Goro’s apartment.</p><p>No one was home. It was to be expected. After all, it was his job to follow Saburo around until he was dismissed. Johnny appeared in the sunken lounge and propped his feet on the coffee table. <em>Just so you know, anything short of painting the walls with his brain is a cop out.</em></p><p><em>Shut up, Johnny. I’m not going to hurt him. I just want an explanation</em>. She sat next to Johnny and pointed her assault rifle at the door, just in case anyone other than Goro walked in.</p><p><em>After he chained you to hell? He has been on his knees for so long he forgot how to stand. He’ll drag you</em>—<em>no, keep you down with him. This is the last time I’m warning you. Zero him, then we delta the fuck out.</em></p><p>She grounded her back molars together. She wanted to prove him wrong, but everything Goro has done in Night City was so he could crawl back into Arasaka’s good graces. He had helped her because helping her was the same thing as helping his company. If she and Arasaka could no longer co-exist—</p><p>What happened next happened too quickly for her to understand. Johnny clutched his head. He opened his mouth in a silent scream. His image tore apart in a dark spiral. A second later she mirrored his movements. The pain that ripped through her was worse than anything she could imagine. It rendered her immobile, thoughtless, like she was suspended in limbo. She couldn’t comprehend the words that flashed on her optics.</p><p> </p><p>WARNING</p><p>CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE</p><p>INITIATING SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE</p><p> </p><p>Her head collided with the floor and she ceased to register the outside world.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“When The Tower falls, nothing will be the same again. Nothing at all.” – Misty Olszewski</p><p>Welcome to ACT II.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The Lovers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Edit: 10/02/2021<br/>Hey readers! Sorry for the late notice, but life has been hectic lately... The next chapter will feature some heavy themes and as a result is quite difficult to write. Long story short due to life and the nature of the chapter I will have to take a week longer. The next update will come on the 21st. Rest assured I'm still typing away diligently on my pc.</p><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When V came to consciousness again the pain was gone. There was fog in her eyes and cotton over her ears. She was standing, or perhaps lying on her stomach. There was no telling up from down. Wisps of colour caressed her like sentient smoke. She tried to turn her head but couldn’t. She was a passenger in a reconstructed shell. The space inside her skull felt empty.</p><p>Her surroundings came to her object by object. She had indeed been sitting. Her fingers dug into supple leather. Cigar smoke wafted through the air, laced with a hint of cologne. She was in a car.</p><p>“Ms. V. A pleasure.”</p><p>The man before her sported a gold arm. His hair was locked in thin dreads. A pair of bloodshot eyes peered at her from behind red shades. His name sat on the tip of her tongue.</p><p>She began to talk, about what, she couldn’t tell. The man laughed. He signalled for the driver to depart. They glided through the streets, passing sidewalk drowned by rubbish. Children sat on dirty steps, playing with guns. The people walked with their head hung low. It was the city she used to call home.</p><p>She could hear herself now. “You’re either somebody or you fizzle out into nothin’. Night City don’t let you choose.”</p><p>“Oh, but it does.” The man took a long drag of his cigar. They talked biz, something about a biochip. She froze at that. All her senses told her to run. She should leave and never look back, but where would she go?</p><p>The car took a slow spin around the block. They discussed specifics. Flathead. Evelyn Parker. Those words made her skin crawl. She had been here before. The die was cast.</p><p>They pulled over at the side of the road. She unlatched the door but couldn’t bring herself to push it wide open. A ray of sunlight crept through the crack. Her skin was translucent beneath it.</p><p>“One more thing, Ms. V.”</p><p>When she looked back the car dissolved. The man was suspended in a dark pit. His singlet was gone, leaving him naked under his vest. Blackened blood oozed from the hole on his forehead. They lay in a junkyard, side by side. His golden hand clamped down on her throat, forcing her into the mud.</p><p>“Quiet life or blaze o’ glory?”</p><p>She screamed. The hand tightened, choking out the sound. She couldn’t breathe.</p><p><em>V!</em> A voice called from somewhere far away. There was a dull sting on her sternum. She thrashed against him. No, she had come too far. She wouldn’t let it end like this.</p><p><em>V, stay with me… Please! </em>Another sting. She kicked the man off her. Without his grip she began to fall. Her head ached like it was on fire. A crushing force squeezed the old air from her lungs. Fresh oxygen flowed into her brain. The process repeated itself, circulating air through her body.</p><p>She opened her eyes. Goro knelt over her, his hands overlapped on her chest. He pressed quickly and with experience. Her sternum was definitely bruised. Two used airhypos littered the floor. After another dozen or so pumps he turned to blow oxygen into her mouth. They locked gaze.</p><p>“V!” A small smile broke loose on his face. He gently flipped her onto her side. “Do not move. Someone has breached your engram. Your brain is badly damaged. Had I not returned in time…”</p><p>She grunted pitifully. As it turned out even that was too much. Several sources of pain hit her at once. It was as if someone had opened up her skull and blended the contents. Her operating system burned against the back of her ear. A slew of system warnings flashed on her optics. It was blinding. Combined with the dull ache that pulsed down her spine, she wished she was still out cold.</p><p>“Breathe.” Goro was back beside her. When had he left? There was a syringe in his hand. He pushed the plunger until a clear droplet formed at the tip of the needle. He held it to her wrist and timed her spasms. When a brief window of stillness came, he injected her with the contents.</p><p>Her body began to loosen. The cramp in her stomach became a small knot until it dissolved altogether. Goro sat beside her and wrapped her hand with his. “I will kill them, the people who did this to you. Tell me what happened.” His voice was soft, but there was no mistaking the bloodlust in his eyes.</p><p>She wanted to reach up and touch his face. Then the reality of the situation hit her. “Don’t say things you can’t follow through.” She pushed herself from the floor. Something smelt burnt. She stumbled down the corridor and found his bathroom. “I’ll clean myself up.”</p><p>Goro kept his arms hovered above her. “Do you require assistance?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>The clipped word stopped him in his tracks. His brows drew together. “I will wait outside.”</p><p>She closed the door. Hopping to the vanity was difficult when her world spun up down and sideways. She nearly fell into the tub. When she reached the vanity she wrapped her hands around the porcelain basin to steady herself. Her reflection gave her a fright. The person in the mirror shouldn’t be alive. Dark blood flowed from her nose. It dripped past her lips, chin, and all the way down her neck. Her ears were bleeding too. That explained her muffled hearing. The burnt smell came from her OS. It had singed the skin grafted around the socket. Her optics were going haywire, flashing red, blue, and shades she hadn’t coded into it.</p><p>She splashed some water onto her face. It washed away the old blood only for the area to become stained again. She slumped on the toilet seat and accessed the damage. Most of the cyberware below her neck was fine. The ones she bought from the street rippers had been clean. Arasaka issued chrome came with security protocols, but having lost all her shit when she was kicked out of the company last time, she made sure to jailbreak them as soon as they were installed. Above neck was another story. Nothing could have prepared her for the nuke on her engram. Despite doing routine sweeps the backdoor had been built into her hardware. It was done before she woke up. Short of dismantling her brain, she would’ve never found it.</p><p>Now things were in the open. What had happened to her was similar to what the Voodoo Boys did to Evelyn. It was a miracle Arasaka hadn’t roasted her into a vegetable, and certainly not for lack of trying. The severe overheat melted her OS. She plucked the burnt Netdriver from her neuro socket. The black weave of her turtleneck hid the blood well. She reset her optics as she waited for her nose to settle.</p><p>She left the bathroom when she stopped bleeding. Goro stood in the middle of the lounge with his back to the corridor. He had removed his jacket. His shoulders were tense, and his top-knot loose like he had tugged on it. One look and she knew Arasaka had called.</p><p>“What did they say?” she rasped as she rested her head against the wall.</p><p>Goro turned to her. His eyes were wide. She glanced at the couch. Her assault rifle was gone.</p><p>“My men called to notify me, that you have unleashed terror inside the tower. Thirty-nine confirmed kills, hundreds injured, billions of Yen in property damage. Hellman—”</p><p>“You won’t be seeing him again. Ever.”</p><p>Goro’s jaw slackened. He had a glazed look about him, his eyes unfocused. “V…what have you done?”</p><p>“You told them I’m with you?”</p><p>“No.” He shook his head without taking his eyes off her. “What happened, V? Where is the woman I lo—”</p><p>“Lied to? Well, she’s been here always, strung along by her nose, the butt of the joke to everyone around her. You knew this was happening, didn’t you?”</p><p>Before coming here she had only wanted to talk, calmly, if possible. But the second the topic came up, anger consumed her like fire would consume a paper house. She threw the burnt Netdriver at his feet.</p><p>“They were altering me, tweaking my engram. If I hadn’t caught on, they would’ve turned me into Smasher 2.0, brainwashed as all fuck, killing for the people who enslaved me!” She took a menacing step forward. “You promised. Said they were going to help me, <em>fix</em> me. Guess you weren’t wrong. In their eyes they probably were fixing me. Too bad I hadn’t seen what you meant back then.”</p><p>Goro’s face was one was sheer terror. She had never seen him so disturbed. Her OS has been removed, but it felt like it was flaring up again.</p><p>“Why didn’t you say something? Oh yeah, duh, silly little me. This was what you wanted too, wasn’t it? A dutiful company woman, reputable, <em>honourable</em>, one who cares for you but at the same time sucks up to Arasaka like a fucking lapdog—”</p><p>“You know that is not true!” Goro pushed her against the wall. Even in his state of fury he had remembered to be gentle. He shook with barely contained anger. She didn’t know whom it was for. “V, I swear, if what you claim is true, I—I did not know. Please, believe me.”</p><p>Her laugh didn’t sound like her. What left her throat was a harrowing rasp. She ignored the hands on her shoulder and crooked her head to the side. “<em>‘She has forgotten you already. They called here, from the clinic.’</em>”</p><p>“What are you—” Goro began, but cut himself short. Realisation dawned on his face.</p><p>She spat out the remaining words out one by one. “<em>‘It. Is. The. Reason. She. Sent. Me. Here.’</em>”</p><p>Those were the exact lines he had said to her on the space station, only seconds apart. As it turned out, orbital gravity hadn’t just affected her. It was hard to imagine he would slip like that, but he did, and she smirked at the recollection. “Why do you look surprised? Didn’t think I would remember? It’s all I do now, reminiscing the good ol’ days. The tabloids say Hanako’s a multi-faceted individual, but I don’t think she can forget and remember at the same time. So tell me, Goro, which one is it?”</p><p>Despite being the nicest of the Arasakas, something about Hanako rubbed her the wrong way. Johnny was right about her, the porcelain bitch. She was raised to be the heart of the Arasaka Empire, but what good was being the heart of a clump of leeches? She couldn’t even kill her brother rightly.</p><p>Cowards, the lot of them.</p><p>Goro refused to meet her eyes. He unhanded her and stared at his open palm. One way or another, she was going to get her answer. He knew that.</p><p>“The truth is, Hanako-sama was not involved again. I could not reach her after I returned to Japan, but I was at the side of another powerful individual.”</p><p>“You went to fucking <em>Saburo?</em>”</p><p>“It was the only way to save you. I could not have left you, not after everything we went through. Saburo-sama offered for you to join the Secure-Your-Soul program.”</p><p>Misty once said that truths were like knives, except it wasn’t to push the knife in. To reveal a hidden truth was to wrench the knife free. The damage was already done.</p><p>“You couldn’t leave me…so you betrayed me.” She took in the gleaming lines of chrome on his face. A little below them, top-shelf cyberware whirled quietly in his neck. Etched into the centre of his collarbone was a red Arasaka logo. He stood close, but they felt worlds apart. If was as if she never knew the man before her. And if he had gone to Saburo, perhaps he never knew her either.</p><p>“Please, V! You must understand. Saburo-sama did not wish to reveal himself. I had no choice—”</p><p>“Had I known who was behind the offer, I would have <em>never</em> signed.”</p><p>She felt sick. Hues of blue and purple distorted her vision. Was it her optics, or muscle memory from that cursed station? She leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. It was night time. The automated lights came on. They threatened to blind her. She buried her face in her hands and drew her legs to her chest. Johnny, the ghost of him, whispered in her ear.</p><p>
  <em>Shame you chose wrong. Damn shame.</em>
</p><p>Or was that what she thought he would say? Where was he anyway? She hadn’t seen him since her engram tore apart. With Goro around, it wasn’t like him to keep quiet.</p><p>She was losing her goddam mind.</p><p>“V…” Goro reached for her.</p><p>“Don’t you dare touch me!” She slapped his hand from her arm. Her nose was bleeding again. The stain spread on her sleeve like a flower in bloom. She shook uncontrollably. Her legs couldn’t support her weight, but with sheer stubbornness she climbed to her feet. She wasn’t safe here. She had to leave.</p><p>“I have not told my men about you. They think I have returned home, nothing more.” Goro’s hands fell to his side. They balled into fists. “You are in no shape to travel. Where will you go?”</p><p>The last question hit deep. That was right. She had nowhere else to go. She had severed all ties by scanning her fingerprint on that contract.  Not that it mattered. Anywhere was better than here.</p><p>She stumbled to the door. Goro came after her. He could lock her in, without an OS she wouldn’t be able to get it open, but he didn’t. It was his final act of mercy and she was thankful for it. She scraped together what remained of her strength. Looking him in the eye was no harder than looking at herself in the mirror.</p><p>“Goro, remember what we talked about last time I came over? Honour, principles, turning over a new leaf…well, ever since I woke up in Tokyo I’ve thrown a blindfold over my own eyes. I tried so hard to convince myself there was no light. I see now, Johnny was right. When I met him in Mikoshi, the real him, he spat on my face and told me I had betrayed everything I stood for, everyone I ever loved for nothing, that you always have, and always will be loyal to Arasaka. If it came down to me or your company, you’d leave me to rot. I told him no, Goro cared for me. I had sounded so sure, but for the longest time, I was afraid to let you choose.</p><p>“I hate this place, this company, this family of wannabe gods. I am leaving and I am never coming back, so I’m letting you choose now: me, or Arasaka.”</p><p>Her feet were light and her head heavy. It felt as if she was floating. The silence was smothering, like a blanket flung over dying embers. She had been afraid to let him choose, because all along, she had known his answer.</p><p>Goro couldn’t bring himself to speak. His lips were pressed thinly. He held out his hand. It was sweet, pure, almost. That had been them, hadn’t it? A handful of soft moments, dotted among a swathe of agony and hard decisions. Neither of them liked what the other person was. Yet they tried, like fools.</p><p>She reached into her turtleneck. With some effort, her fingers hooked around what she was looking for. She tore the silver chain free. The key to his apartment hung from it. She held it up to him. Goro flinched and withdrew his hand. When he refused to take it, she dropped it at her feet.</p><p>Between the two of them, she had always been the one who caved. She caved and caved and caved, until she collapsed onto herself. She had become an empty shell with an empty mind. There was nothing left to give.</p><p>Naturally, this was the end.</p><p>She opened the door and stepped into the night.</p><p>“Goodbye, Takemura.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The Lovers is the card of dichotomies. It points to the contradictions that clash within each of us and of the challenge of striking a balance between extremes. The Lovers is also the card of dilemmas, like The Fool who stands at the crossroads, unable to make [her] decision.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal </p><p>V refused to conform, and Goro refused to change. This moment was always going to come. Sometimes, love is not enough.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Death</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>WARNING:<br/>This chapter contains suicide thoughts and attempts. It is the only chapter that will. Please skip if you are uncomfortable with these topics.</p><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were valuables in V’s apartment. She didn’t dare go back for them. If she wanted a shot at survival, she had to leave Arasaka home turf. That meant getting as far from Japan as possible.</p><p>Out of habit she had memorised the surveillance pattern in the complex. She used that knowledge to avoid the cameras. Losing her OS was crippling. She wouldn’t be netrunning again unless she could find a replacement. The short route from Goro’s apartment to the alley behind the Black Rose took her half an hour to complete. Every civilian looked like an Arasaka agent in disguise. She shook the thought from her head. She had to be rational. One step out of line and it was all over.</p><p>Only when she slipped into the alley did she let out the cough she had been holding. She wiped the blood on her pants. She was safe here, for now. After leaning against the filth stained dumpster for a minute, just breathing, she pulled up her contacts. She had memorised the details of her important Night City associates. A handful of people fell in the overlap between those who could help her and those who gave a damn. Given the scale and delicacy of the issue, she narrowed the list down Meredith, or more specifically: Militech.</p><p>Militech was Arasaka’s arch-nemesis. The feud between them was financial as well as personal. Militech’s CEO Donald Lundee reminded Saburo of the pilot who had shot down his plane in World War II. It nearly killed Saburo, ended his career in the Japanese air force, and shamed him for life. The two giants duked it out in the fourth corporate war. On a mountain of skeletons, they vied for power. Not one could wholly annihilate the other. Ever since then it had been an ongoing struggle for territory and prestige.</p><p>If there was one organisation she could count on to not be an Arasaka sell-out, it was Militech. Involving Meredith was the safest option. She was her friend, but more importantly their interests aligned. V refused to test people’s loyalties again, not after it backfired so spectacularly on her.</p><p>The call was a rapid-fire Q&amp;A. When it came to biz Meredith did not fuck around. She came through for her. Within twenty minutes an inconspicuous van arrived at the mouth of the alley. It was unmodded, with the paint job scratched around the doors. Behind the tinted windows sat a squad of elite guards armed to the teeth. She got on, nodded at the guards, and promptly passed out.</p><p>She woke up inside a container, on a cargo ship headed for Night City. There was a neurosurgeon on board. Given the facilities, the surgeon did all she could, but from what V gathered things weren’t looking great. She drifted in and out of consciousness. The container rattled against the ocean wind. Next thing she knew, the noise was gone. The container had been lugged to a Militech warehouse.</p><p>“You look like shit.” Meredith waited for her outside the rusted doors. She wore a white armoured dress with burgundy stilettos. Her hair was smoothed back and carefully gelled in place. Promotion suited her.</p><p>Memories from another lifetime rushed forth at the sight of white. It was a shade V never wore. White was purity, innocence, a shade unadulterated and devoid of filth. He had looked so out of place in Misty’s shop, like a dove with spread wings, already flying away.</p><p>V opened her mouth to speak. All that came out were tears. Were they tears of joy at seeing a friendly face? Or tears of shame, tears of regret, tears of defeat? She didn’t know. All she could tell for certain was she felt awful. She ached from her scalp to the tip of her fingers. Many times when she drifted into consciousness, the pain had been so overwhelming she thought she wasn’t going to make it. She had clung to life stubbornly, because if she was going to die, she wanted to die in the city she called home.</p><p>Meredith cleared the floor to give her some space. She was thankful. It was humiliating to have a break down in front of strangers, especially after she had fucked up so badly. They sat on the edge of the container, her crying, Meredith smoking. After she cried her eyes dry Meredith handed her a tissue. “So what now?”</p><p>“I…I don’t know. I need to regroup. Think.” She wiped her face all over. Balling her eyes out had relieved some pressure inside her skull, but for the most part, she still felt like shit.</p><p>“The lab’s working on your report. I’ll have them send it when they’re done. Hate to admit it, but ‘saka’s got some impressive tech. Analysis will take a while. In the meantime, you know how to reach me.”</p><p>V scrunched up the tissue and tossed it aside. She climbed to her feet. “Thank you, Meri, for getting me out of that place…for everything.”</p><p>Meredith stood too. She regarded her with an unreadable expression. Just as V took that for her cue to leave, Meredith pulled her into a hug. She rested her cheek against V’s. The chrome lines on Meredith’s temple radiated a soothing coolness. “Whatever happens, know I’ll do my best to help.”</p><p>It was a rational promise, timid, even. But as V had learnt by now, anything beyond that was a lie. Meredith had promised without her having to ask. It was more than what she deserved.</p><p>V thought she had no more tears to shed. As it turned out, there were still a few drops left inside her. She bit back her sob and nodded. They stayed like that for a while. She clung onto the sliver of comfort. Eventually, both of them had to go. Meredith’s people dropped her off at the storage facility she had contracted to safe keep her belongings. She watched the black Militech van disappear into the evening haze.</p><p>Just like that, she was alone again.</p><p>She pinched herself. The stab of pain was a welcomed distraction. <em>Keep it together, V, no one else is going to do it for you.</em> She entered the facility and spoke with the AI manning reception. Her unit was one of the smallest premium options available. The door unlocked as she neared.</p><p>At the centre of the unit was a large stainless steel bench. On the far wall, rows of shelving lay empty. Only the centre portion was used. Recessed into memory foam was all the iron she had collected during her lifetime as a merc. She ran her fingers over the gleaming metal. Jackie’s <em>La Chingona Dorada</em>, Panam’s <em>Overwatch</em>, Judy’s <em>Mox</em>, <em>Skippy</em>, the pistol with a smartass AI that she found in an alley, Kerry’s <em>Archangel</em>, River’s <em>Crash</em>, even <em>Plan B</em>, Dex’s gun, and the now empty spot that once belonged to <em>Jinchu Maru</em>.</p><p>The sight of them brought forth memories too painful to bear. All those people she had left behind, her past, buried in a storage unit, never to see daylight again. She walked to the only container in the unit. It was matte black, shock absorbent, and four times the size of a briefcase. She hauled it on to the bench and opened it.</p><p>Inside rested her most trusted companion, the tech precision rifle <em>Widow Maker</em>. She had come by the thing of beauty from a Raffen shootout with Panam. Even in its raw form it packed one hell of a punch. Since finding it she had modded the rifle beyond recognition. She tinkered with every piece of chrome until it became a true instrument of death.</p><p>The rifle was an extension of her, with pieces of skin, bone, and organ replaced by cyberware. As she lived shackled in Tokyo, she had dreamed of its recoil, felt the lingering weight of it in her hands. She’d fire another rifle and reminisce the way its scope moulded perfectly against her eye. What wouldn’t she give to have one last gig with this battered old thing? But she couldn’t bring herself to retrieve it. It felt as if she was tainting it, along with a past violent, bloody, but pure.</p><p>She loaded Widow Maker and slung it over her back. The container had a bottom compartment. It held a key, a change of clothes, three rolls of hard Eddies, and a steel case the size of her palm. She carefully opened the case. Inside was a red shard. Circuit etched from a brighter shade of scarlet permeated the shard like veins. She flipped it over. Light caught the veins and pulsed through the thread-like connections, igniting the shard from one end to another. It was a spare copy of her operating system, the Netwatch Netdriver MK.5.</p><p>V laughed. She had known all along that Arasaka could not be trusted. That was why she rented this unit. She had lied to herself by thinking it was for her iron collection, but how would she explain this shard? How would she explain the stash? The Eddies, the gear, the spare OS…</p><p>She knew, but she signed anyway.</p><p>The shard burned on its way in. She leaned against the bench and let out a few ragged breaths. Her operating system slowly booted. Militech had done their best to patch her up but it would take a long time for her to recover, if at all. She should let her system rest. Alas her home was not a merciful place. Night City had the highest crime rate on Earth. She loved it for the shark tank that it is.</p><p>Shedding from her corp getup was liberating. She changed into a black pozer jacket, jeans, tank top, and aramid boots. The container was now empty, but she wasn’t done yet. She dug her nails into the memory foam and found the release switch. A secret compartment popped open.</p><p>The last item wasn’t meant for her. It had been custom made for Johnny Silverhand. The handgun <em>Malorian Arms 3516</em> hadn’t aged a day since its conception. She picked it up and resisted the urge to spin it around her fingers. She gave her iron collection one last glance and sealed the unit.</p><p>Parking was a short trip down the elevator. In the garage linked to her unit was Jackie’s Arch motorcycle. She swung her leg over the red upholstered seat. As a part of her package, vehicles in her garage were routinely serviced. She slotted the key into the ignition. The bike hummed against her palm. Was it glad to see her? She leaned forth and rode from the garage.</p><p>The highway took her through the Northside Industrial District. Once the prosperous hub of Watson, what remained of Northside was a decrepit husk. She had been too young to remember, but some years ago an earthquake struck the area. Things fell apart when the Japanese corps pulled out. It rendered most of the factories defunct. New apartment blocks were erected on the edge of the district to hide it from the rest of the city. In 2077, only the lawless or truly desperate braved these streets. She had found Evelyn here, tied up next to a bed, the BD still rolling.</p><p>Jackie’s Arch handled like a red hummingbird. It darted through the district. On wide, soot smeared sidewalk, Maelstrom gangers gathered in droves. They bragged about their latest heist, hooted at passers-by, and got high on SynthCoke. She wondered how Brick was doing. Some Maelstrom was truly monstrous. They got a kick out of modifying people against their will. But others were alright. It was hard to gauge which end of the scale a typical Maelstrom lay. Scavs, she shot on sight.</p><p>The highway to the city seemed endless. Irradiated dust stained the horizon into a dirty shade of amber. The setting sun was a patch of weakly lit sky, smothered by pollution and mega-buildings. What remained of the light had become backdrop to a stencil of corruption. So many good people were swallowed by this city, those near and dear to her, but she kept coming back.</p><p>There was something special about this city of nightmares. It shone through the suffering, the despair, and refused to die. That little something was choice. Hers was the hand that shaped her life. Sometimes the choice was between bad and worse, but there was one nonetheless. A corporate exec could catch a bullet as easily as a drugged up gonk. No one stayed on top forever. No one could have it all.</p><p>In Night City, there were no gods, no masters.</p><p>She opened the old gate and rolled the bike through. She had done this a thousand times. The action itself bought forth a sense of relief. There was a red lantern on the far wall. She parked Jackie’s Arch beneath it. Now she was faced with a choice, left, or right; down, or up. She chose up. The route took her through a junk room and into a dim shop filled with jars and burning incense. She had entered through the back door. A woman stood behind the counter, facing away from her. For a moment V couldn’t bring herself to speak.</p><p>The woman stirred. Had she felt eyes on her back? She always possessed an uncanny sixth sense. The face that turned into view hadn’t aged a day. Her lips were painted black. They once bonded over their shared love of black lipstick. She wore a spiked collar and her favourite purple sweater, ripped at the hems.</p><p>“V!” Misty perked up at the sight of her.</p><p>“Hey, Misty.” V walked around the counter, coming face to face with the owner of Misty’s Esoterica. There were a couple of new trinkets scattered around the shop. An energy crystal here, a bonsai there, but for the most part, the shop remained a freeze-frame in time. She remembered the first time she set foot in here, Jackie in the lead, her following. It was shortly after she got fired.</p><p><em>Chica</em>, Jackie had said, <em>don’t you worry, Misty’s good with this kinda stuff. She’ll play a soothing track, give you some herbs. You’ll be right as rain!</em></p><p>A smile spread on Misty’s face, like she was truly happy to see her. That smile was tainted by a hint of sadness. “I haven’t seen you in over a year. How have you been?”</p><p>“Great. I’m still kickin’, so things could be wor—”</p><p>“V,” Misty said in that soft, but affirmative tone of hers. “You look terrible.”</p><p>She hadn’t seen herself in the mirror since Goro’s apartment, but if she looked as good as she felt… V ran a hand through her hair. “I guess I do. How are things?”</p><p>“Oh, you know, same as it’s always been. Night City never sleeps, nor does it change. Every year the crime rate climbs a little higher, the streets get a little rougher, and we grow a little older.”</p><p>As they spoke, something rubbed against her calf. There was a soft purr. “V, look!” Misty pointed at the source of the sound. She rounded the counter and bent over. “He’s back! Likes to come and go, this one. I hardly see him in the shop, must’ve known you were coming home.”</p><p>In Misty’s arms rested what must’ve been the ugliest cat in Night City. He looked nothing like the ads, where a frail sack of fur would rub against the pampered rich. Almost hairless, he had a large set of chartreuse eyes that was yellow under sunlight and green in the darkness. He peered at her from behind the yarn of Misty’s sweater. He was by no means shy, but neither was he friendly.</p><p>V petted Nibbles. He nudged his head against her palm. She had dropped him off the night she left with Goro. Despite their argument, Misty had taken great care of Nibbles. He had put on weight. When she found him near the dumpster, he had been skin and bones.</p><p>V rested her hand on Nibbles’ belly. He licked her finger. The flick of softness opened the flood gates. Things she never meant to say poured from her mouth. She didn’t know how to stop it, so she let it all out. “Misty, god, I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I never should have helped Arasaka. You were right. Johnny was right… I wish I could go back and do everything differently, end things on my terms.”</p><p>Misty took her hand and squeezed gently. There was no judgement in her eyes, only acceptance. “You were dying, V. You did what you had to. There is no saving everyone. You can only save yourself.”</p><p>“But I had wanted—I tried, Misty.”</p><p>“I know.” Misty gave her hand a final shake. Nibbles jumped to the floor. He sprang out the back door, where she had entered. “You should go see Vik. He was crushed when you disappeared, kept telling me how he never should’ve locked up that night. Maybe if he had been here, you would’ve come back. He thought of you as his daughter, the family he never got to start.”</p><p>V nodded. Just as she was about to pass the bead curtains, Misty called. She followed her to the exit. In her hand was a tarot deck, the one Jackie had bought. “One last thing, wanna do a quick reading? For old times’ sake.”</p><p>V thought about it and shook her head. “Thanks Misty, but I don’t think I’ll like the outcome.”</p><p>There was a sad smile on Misty’s face. She hummed in understanding and let her be. When V returned into the courtyard, Nibbles was nowhere to be seen. The entrance to Viktor’s clinic was illuminated by a lopsided fluorescent tube. Night had fallen. She descended the narrow steps one at a time, careful not to brush against the rusted rails. Muffled cheering drifted from around the gate. A bell tolled three times, followed by the words: <em>“Knock down!”</em></p><p>“Come on, you son of a bitch… Get up…<em>just get up!</em>”</p><p>She rounded the corner. A man sat alone in the dark basement. He wore a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His eyes were fixed to the screen. It was playing a boxing match.</p><p>“<em>Ten…Nine…Eight…Seven…Six…Five…Four…Three…Two…One!</em>”</p><p>“God damn it!” Viktor punched screen. The force ripped it from the cable, ending the recording. As she had found out, the match he kept playing happened long ago. It was torment, watching the same doomed moment over and over. She got why he did it now.</p><p>Her breaths grated in the silence. Viktor turned to her with wide eyes. She squeezed out a smile. “Viky, bet you didn’t think I’d rock up again.”</p><p>He only stared at her. Then he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. She hopped into the clinic. Her feet remembered every step that was hidden in the shadows. She had tripped on them first time she came over; the corner was dingy as hell. She never made the same mistake twice.</p><p>Viktor wrapped her in a crushing hug. “Good to see you kid.”</p><p>She returned it like her life depended on it. Aside from the chrome, hugs were another one of the old man’s specialties. “Likewise, you spryly old ripper.”</p><p>Viktor held her by the shoulders and gave her a once over. V rolled her eyes.</p><p>“If you’re gonna say I look like shit, don’t.”</p><p>Viktor brushed his nose with his thumb. “Nonsense, but you do look like you could use some work. We’ll run a few scans. Chair, please.”</p><p>Her smile faltered. The Militech surgeon had recorded her condition in whispers. She still remembered the pain on Viktor’s face every time she crawled into his clinic with a relic malfunction. It wasn’t fair to put him through that again. She shook her head. “Not this time, Vik.”</p><p>“Kid—”</p><p>“I know what I’m doing, trust me.”</p><p>“…Alright.” Viktor sighed. He dug around the space under his desk until he pulled out a swivel stool even more beat up than the one he sat on. It was her spot. She’d found the sorry thing a block down from the clinic. Someone had dumped it on the sidewalk. She rolled it all the way up here so she could have a place to sit while they chatted. She couldn’t believe he’d kept it.</p><p>They talked as if the year was still 2077, with no relic in her head and Jackie about to walk in at any moment. It was at the half hour mark that a patient dropped by. V got up and pushed the stool back under the desk.</p><p>“I better get going.”</p><p>“Where will you stay? Your old place got…”</p><p>“Seized, I know. As for a place to crash…guess I haven’t figured that out yet, just trying to live life a quarter mile at a time. Maybe I’ll hole up at No-Tell for a couple of nights, reassess the sich.”</p><p>Viktor nodded hesitantly. “Let me know if you need anything.”</p><p>“Will do. Take care of yourself, old man.”</p><p>The night air of Watson was thick with exhaust. She returned to Jackie’s Arch. The ride to No-Tell Motel would be a short one. She was tired, but she didn’t feel like turning in for the night. It would be some time before she could fall asleep again. To her left was a grimy passageway. Somehow even that looked more inviting than the halls of where she got killed. From memory, she threaded through the passageway and found the elevator.</p><p>The rooftop of Misty’s Esoterica was covered in rubbish and black streaks. Dust blanketed the city in a storm and the rain would not quite wash it away. Misty kept pot plants here to liven the space. There were two plastic chairs set up at the far end, one red, one blue. She took the red one. The city smelled of smoke. Tendrils of grey fume licked the sky. It was one giant crematorium, forever burning. Hundreds of thousands of tortured souls raged against the machine. They ignited everyone around them until nothing existed at all.</p><p>Her optics lit up with incoming mail. Militech had sent her report. She opened the attachment. Mega-corps did not beat around the bush. The report was concise and written in layman’s terms, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Arasaka had used her mechanical brain to house a device that would permanently ‘decommission’ her. The nuke on her engram was the activation code. It caused inoperable neuron degradation. If she let her brain rest and stopped netrunning, she would have six months to live.</p><p>V stared at the document. Her heartbeat was steady. Perhaps she had exhausted her capacity for fear in the past year. Her phone buzzed. A thumbnail image of Meredith regarded her with a stern frown. She let it go to voice mail. The woman immediately hung up and dialled again. Three missed calls later, a text came through.</p><p>
  <em>CALL ME.</em>
</p><p>Across the void framed by low-rise shopfronts, a billboard flashed with an ad for Nicola. The clip was followed by a black screen, replacing the bright colours with a more sombre tone. The ad did not rush, as if it knew those who watched would wait for its message. Slowly, two lines of white text faded into view.</p><p>
  <em>Relic. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Secure your soul.</em>
</p><p>A bout of panic struck her. It began from her abdomen and ended as a tingle on her fingertips. <em>Johnny</em>, she called. No one answered.</p><p>It was the silence that poisoned her with fear. She had been here before, only this time, she was truly alone. She had wrestled fate and lost. All those hard choices, she had made for nothing. She was back where she started, with a malfunctioning brain and a countdown to oblivion.</p><p>There was a familiar weight in her jacket. She pulled it out. Malorian Arms 3516 was one hell of a gun. As a merc, she had held back from using it because it simply wasn’t hers.</p><p>
  <em>Johnny. If you’re in there at all, talk to me. I need you now.</em>
</p><p>He didn’t respond. Why would he? She had shredded his engram, as per contract. She dragged a hand down her face. When that didn’t help, she pulled at her hair. Why was she still here? Her friends were fine without her. The person with whom she wanted to start a family was gone. Did she have another reason to try?</p><p>Johnny’s pistol radiated a comforting chill. God, she was so tired. She had been running on empty for so long. The last straw had landed a year ago. It was a miracle she lived to leave Mikoshi at all. If there was no escaping the cold clutches of death, she might as well embrace them. It was better this way. She would go quietly and out of sight, without being a burden to anyone.</p><p>She slotted the barrel into her mouth. The steel tasted of varnish. A slim trigger rested firm against her index finger. All she had to do was pull it. All her problems would vanish. There would be no more pain.</p><p>“V…?”</p><p>She whipped around, at the door to the rooftop stood a man who should’ve been downstairs with his patient.</p><p>“Vikh?” The barrel slurred her words. She pulled it out to speak. As soon as it left her mouth Viktor sprung forth and slapped the gun from her hand. He tackled her to the ground. It was not a cute shove either, but a full bodyweight, pin-down hold. His mild demeanour sometimes made her forget he was an ex-heavy weight boxer. Being pinned down by someone his size was not a good feeling.</p><p>“Ah—can’t breathe. I yield, I yield!” She slapped the floor with her free hand.</p><p>Viktor grunted. “Promise me you won’t do that again!”</p><p>“Vik—”</p><p>“Promise!”</p><p>“Fine, fine, I promise! Just let me go already!”</p><p>Viktor removed his weight, but he pulled her up by her gun hand and held onto it. Only when she was thinking straight again did the stupidity of her actions hit her. What the hell was she doing? If she’d offed herself like that and someone who cared for her found her body… It would destroy them.</p><p>The hand that clamped around hers was firm, but if she concentrated, she could feel a slight tremor. “Kid, what the fuck? If that damn elevator had taken a second longer—if you had done what you were about to, and I was standing right here—I—”</p><p>She doesn’t recall ever having seen him so scared. Several times she had been in the clinic when a patient was wheeled in bloody and falling apart. Hell, she had been one of those patients herself. Viktor Vector was talented, professional. He was both the scalpel and the screwdriver. Now he was shaking before her. A man twice her size who could knock an Animal out with a single punch, fearing for her life. She pulled him into a hug. “Vik, it was a mistake. I promise I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Viktor didn’t say anything, nor did he let go. He breathed in short bursts. She could feel his heart hammer against hers. Eventually he returned the hug.</p><p>“How did you find me?” V asked.</p><p>“It was Misty. She felt something was wrong. After you left she did a tarot reading. She ran into the clinic and told me you needed help. Your bike was still parked, so we split up to look for you.” Viktor grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look him in the eye. “You are not going to that disgusting motel. You stay right here, with us, you understand? I have a spare bed out the back. We are going to run some scans. You get some food into you, or so help me.”</p><p>He wasn’t going to let her refuse this time. For some reason, that was incredibly reassuring. V smiled and followed Viktor to the exit. Malorian Arms 3516 lay quietly atop a pile of crinkled cardboard. Viktor watched her like a hawk. She picked up the iron slowly, keeping the nozzle down and aimed away from her at all times. As badly as she had fucked up, Johnny wouldn’t have enjoyed flatlining her. She could, however, think of something both of them would much rather be shooting.</p><p>The billboard was still locked on the ad for Relic. She raised the gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. A single bullet tore through the night. She was out of range, but it didn’t matter. How rarely does someone get to remake the same decision? She had chosen the wrong path last time and lost a piece of herself.</p><p>Now she was whole again.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Death is the card of becoming. It signifies an imminent and difficult transition – the conclusion of one phase of life and the beginning of another.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>Wow, that was almost two chapters rolled into one. Apologies for the late update folks. Real life responsibilities have been piling up since the new year. I will try my best to meet my weekly updates, but I don't want to rush the fic, so if I don't think the chapter is polished enough I might postpone future updates to the fortnight mark. Rest assured I always complete my posted works. We are only halfway through the story!</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Temperance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The bed Viktor had in mind was one V was familiar with. He and Misty dusted the old thing off and propped it where she had slept last time. It was as if the second half of 2077 never happened. Things were a split image of when she had escaped Konpeki Plazza: the machines beeping, her dying, and Viktor on his swivel stool, poking at his data pad.</p><p>The sounds were therapeutic. She had spent many nights here getting accustomed to it. She had been certain sleep would elude her. As it turned out she crashed as soon as her head hit the pillow. She slept deeply and dreamt of nothing. The next time she opened her eyes, the final piece of a bygone time slotted in place. A man in a perfectly starched white shirt sat next to her. His eyes were closed and his brows furrowed. No light shone through the clinic’s retractable gates. It must still be night.</p><p>Had she grown too comfortable with her recollection? She doesn’t remember him holding her hand last time. He only bent over her, inspected her neuro socket, where Relic had been slotted, and gave her a pat on the shoulder. She later found out that had been when he planted the tracker, and to think she had felt the warmth of care. Was anything between them real?</p><p>“Goro…” she murmured.</p><p>His eyes snapped open. There was a moment of confusion then immediate clarity. It had a sobering effect on her. This man was not the illusion she had grown to love. He was a soldier, a blade, a loyal company man.</p><p>She sat and cleared her throat. “Takemura.”</p><p>He looked away at that name. Her eyes drifted to their linked hands. He did not remove it. Neither did she. Old habits die hard in a city like this. She inspected him with the calculation of a rogue netrunner. Aside from mild fatigue, his body was in peak condition. He had forgone his topknot. The band that usually held it in place was wrapped around his wrist. His hair covered his shoulders in a black and silver fan. He had deemed the location secure enough to get comfortable, but not so much he’d let his guard down.</p><p>He wasn’t going to speak first, so she did. “How did you find me?”</p><p>Goro studied the far wall as if there were standardised answers etched onto it. When he replied his tone was flat. “Through contacts, I have few in Night City, but Tokyo is my domain. I knew you would not risk flight, so I watched the docks, inspected ship manifests. The Militech container was easy to spot. I lost you when you entered the city. The woman from the shop called me.”</p><p>“Misty called you?”</p><p>“Yes. She had said I should see you now, or never again.” Goro locked gaze with her. As he turned, the overhead florescent illuminated the other side of his face. His right cheek was purple. There was a cut on his bottom lip.</p><p>She resisted the urge to touch it. “What happened?”</p><p>“Your ripperdoc has quite the right hook.”</p><p>As well as Viktor used to box, he wouldn’t catch someone like Goro off guard. After a pause, she gathered the courage to remove her hand. “Should I be expecting other <em>guests</em>?”</p><p>“I came alone.”</p><p>“Bullshit. They let you skip work just like that?” She leaned closer. “This is more than my safety. If any of those ‘saka fucks lay a finger on Vik and Misty—”</p><p>“V,” Goro said calmly, “I am alone.”</p><p>A miffed sound escaped her nose. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, but she linked to the clinic’s surveillance network. She did a thorough sweep of the block. Midnight traffic was thin. Aside from a few squatters she had seen on her way in, the coast was clear. The onset of a migraine poked at her frontal lobe. She left the interface quickly and rested her head against the backboard. “Why are you here?”</p><p>Goro rubbed his knuckles. He did that when he was nervous. Unlike his proud demeanour in Tokyo, his head was hung low. Was it Night City that drained the pride from him, or the circumstances that always led him here?</p><p>“After you left, I confronted Sabu—Arasaka-sama. He confirmed your claim. While Hellman prepared your engram for transfer, he identified parts of your personality that would reject Arasaka doctrine. He had left the segments intact because he feared removing them would affect your ability to netrun. Instead he proposed a slower alternative. He would transfer your engram to your new body. Then while you were active, remove the segments line by line to monitor your reaction in real time. Arasaka-sama agreed to the proposal.” Goro balled his hands into fists. They trembled under the force. “I am sorry, V. I have failed you.”</p><p>She doesn’t say anything. What was there to say anyway? It wasn’t okay. She wanted to forgive him, but she suspected that she wouldn’t for a long time. The confirmation should bring catharsis. In reality, her mouth tasted of a bitter validation that had come too little too late.</p><p>Despite everything, it was still hard to see him like this. Goro was a man who at all times knew what to do and how to do it. Even disgraced, he had ploughed head first from one suicide mission to the next. Now he sat idle, as if he had exhausted all options and circled back to the start. He was at the end of his rope. So was she.</p><p>She nodded. That had been good enough for him. He let out the breath he had been holding and continued: “The moment I ended the call, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I went to your apartment but you were not there. I spent some time to track you down, flew to Night City as soon as I could.</p><p>“It was the Arasaka family doctrine to work hard. The man I swore to protect wished to make the most of life, so when the time came, he could accept death with dignity. He has become something I no longer recognise. I will resign from the company.”</p><p>V scoffed. “Bit optimistic, don’t you think?”</p><p>Goro shook his head. “To repay for training, education and necessities, Arasaka has a mandatory military service of thirty years. It is a time I have more than served. On the way here, I have filed for resignation.”</p><p>At last she was met with some semblance of relief. He had accepted disillusionment and acted upon it. Maybe her efforts hadn’t been for nothing after all. The news opened grounds for negotiation. The thought puzzled her. For what had she been hoping to negotiate?</p><p>“Now that you are back in Night City, what will you do after you recover?”</p><p>Goro’s question was met with an awkward pause. It was her turn to share. She wasn’t ready, not even Vik and Misty knew, but after tonight they might never cross paths again. If he had to find out she’d prefer if it was done in person. She had left too many people behind without a proper goodbye. She sent the Militech report. The data lingered in cloud space for a fraction of a second and it found its way to Goro. He narrowed his eyes at the text. Then they widened.</p><p>“There is no after,” she whispered.</p><p>Goro’s focus shifted from the corner of his eyes to her face. They looked straight through her. She gave him time to process the news, but it became apparent that no amount of silence would be enough.</p><p>She had known his optics were silver. What she hadn’t noticed was the rich ring of brown contained within them. That was the colour of his natural eye, hidden by the glow of mechanics. In the small hours of the night, his optics dimmed until they were a soft wash of light. Hers was a world obsessed with replacements. The human body was limited only by imagination. Yet for a reason she could not place, no chrome she had seen matched the beauty of his natural eye, something so fragile and painfully ordinary.</p><p>A layer of moisture glossed over them. He looked away. It began as a choked gasp. He tried to stop himself from acting on it, but couldn’t. He swayed from side to side, his hands balled into a tight fist. It was as if the burden to stay upright was too great. His spine bowed until he doubled onto himself. Repressed gasps escaped from where he had buried his face. A thought once crossed her mind that she wished he could feel just a fraction of the agony she did. Now that he was in pain, all she wanted to do was make things better.</p><p>“Goro, it’s not your fault.” She covered his hands with hers. “Sometimes there is no way out.”</p><p>He held them up to his chest. Her palm rested flat against his heartbeat. It was erratic. She rubbed slow circles with her thumb. It didn’t help. Something wet dripped onto her forearms. She was at a loss of what to do. It took a lot to crack someone like Goro. She’d seen him endure assassination attempts without so much as a grimace. A pang of guilt struck her. How could she have doubted him? Misplaced trust in the devil or not, she has had his heart from the very start.</p><p>Goro rarely lost control of himself. When he did, it took him a long time to recover. He wiped his face with his sleeve without letting go of her. His eyes had taken on a shade of pink. Perhaps it was because she never looked away. She caught something flash across his face. It was a cold glint, profound and hateful. She had never seen it on him before.</p><p>He doesn’t say anything, but the way he rubbed her hand was telling. The glint quickly vanished behind a mask of passivity. She had been his partner too many times to not see where this was going. She knew what lay at the destination. For the entirety of her time in Tokyo she’d wake up and think of nothing but the slights against her. She spent time with her loved ones but it wasn’t enough. Sealed thinly beneath the surface was a pit of venom so vast no amount of tenderness could hope to erode. It was there when she met new people, there when she smiled and shook their hands. It tainted everything inside her and filled her with spite. She was a ticking time bomb, on edge in her own home. She didn’t want him to become that.</p><p>“No, Goro. No more deaths.” She gently cupped his face. “I only have six months to live. I don’t want to be remembered like this.”</p><p>Her words deflated him. It was easy to use anger as a crutch. She took a deep breath and suppressed the bitterness in her own heart. “What will <em>you</em> do, now that you’re free?”</p><p>Goro rubbed his knuckles again. The chrome embedded into his hands was beautiful. Matt black carbon-steel work traced down the length of his fingers, complementing his silver knuckles. They reinforced his fragile bones. It would take substantial force to break them. She appreciated his hands like she would appreciate an oiled gun. There was beauty in death, but not warmth.</p><p>“I have given it a lot of thought, in the year you were gone,” Goro rasped. When his words got caught, he cleared his throat and gave himself a moment to gather his thoughts. “You asked me how I wanted to be remembered. No one had done that before. They came to me with prepared answers. For decades I have gone from one place to the next, taking, killing, destroying. I bring suffering and death. I don’t think I can become a nomad. It was a foolish dream, to drift through the wasteland with no purpose.”</p><p>“Looks like you haven’t found your answer.”</p><p>Goro smiled. It was a small one. He leaned in and studied her face like he was seeing the shadow of a person long gone. “My grandmother was very wise. She once told me we are the sum of our experiences. I looked to my childhood in search of clarity. Why I have agreed to do the same things from a past I wished to escape? It was for purpose. I wanted to feel needed, like I was a part of something greater than myself. I was lucky to have been given purpose when I was lost. Most from my district never get that chance. They live an impoverished life until they either leave or disappear.”</p><p>His mask of indifference cracked. He pressed his lips into a thin line and regarded her with a rawness she wasn’t prepared for. “That must change. I have watched the district long enough to know it will not happen by itself. I wish to open a dojo in Chiba-11. For once, build something, help someone. I will teach my people discipline and self-defence. Give them a worthy cause until they are ready to find one for themselves.”</p><p>“…like Arasaka gave you?”</p><p>“No, V, like you gave me.”</p><p>She couldn’t help it. She smiled too. For a moment they were back on that construction site, with the golden evening sun washed over them, sharing dreams like an idyllic future was theirs for the taking. They’d reach forth, with their arm fully extended and feel the thing they longed for most scrape the tip of their finger. If they reached far enough, wished hard enough, it was almost as if they could have it.</p><p>But it was the wrong city, wrong people. If happily ever after was never an option, she’d gladly borrow what she could for the six months she had left.</p><p>She blinked her eyes dry. “Thought you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”</p><p>“Not unless he wishes to learn.” His joy waned as he caressed her cheek. “V, I do not ask you to forgive me. I know I have no right. I simply wish to tell you this. If, by some miracle, I could go back to that moment and remake my decision, I would come with you. I would choose <em>you</em>.”</p><p>She touched his split lip. Time seemed to still. “You could still choose me.”</p><p>The next thing she knew his lips were on hers. She wasn’t sure who leaned in. It didn’t matter. She threaded her fingers through his hair and tugged until he was lying on top of her. His weight locked her between him and the mattress. She could think of nothing more comforting.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Temperance is the card of balance. It may symbolise self-restraint or the gradual shift toward a more mature state of equilibrium.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal</p><p>Hey folks, unfortunately due to real-life struggles I will have to take a fortnight for the next update. Chapter ten, 'The Fool',  will come on the 14th of March. Looking at my outline I am very excited for what will come next.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Fool</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V woke up when the sun was high in the sky. She had dozed off with Goro on top of her. Despite logging more than enough hours her body was sluggish. The ache in her brain had dulled to a persistent static. She fought the soreness in her arms and pushed herself up. It was starting, the downward spiral.</p><p>The clinic was empty. She found the people seated in a circle in Misty’s shop. Vik had taken the reclinable chair reserved for clients. Despite the depth of the chair he barely used half of it. Resting on his left thigh was a data pad. He leaned on his opposite knee and swiped through the files. Misty sat on the swivel stool she used for consultations. The shop was filled with trinkets but sparsely furnished. Goro was assigned to a small plastic stool. It was lower than the length of his calves. He sat with his hands together and his back ramrod straight.</p><p>“Good, you are awake.” Goro noticed her as soon as she lifted the bead curtain.</p><p>She took in the three of them. There was no open hostility, which was as much as she could ask for. She walked around the counter and stopped between Vik and Goro. “What did I miss?”</p><p>“I had informed them of my decision. However I have not disclosed your condition. I believe that is best left to you.” Goro’s hair was back in an immaculate top knot. He had donned his jacket. To her surprise it was not the suit jacket that paired with the shirt and dress shoes, but one of black leather. It was armoured and reflected a matte sheen, elemental resistance. Much nicer than the one she associated with the words ‘Goro’ and ‘Night City’, but a spitting image, no less.</p><p>There was a deep crease between Misty’s brows. She gave V a small smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Vik hadn’t looked at her since she walked in. V leaned over and caught a glimpse of the file on his data pad. It was her scan results.</p><p>“Vik…” She placed a hand on his shoulder.</p><p>The contact startled him. He gave her hand a tight squeeze. He wasn’t wearing his ripper glove. The calluses on his thumb caught her skin. His hands were rough, but his touch gentle.</p><p>“Guess there’s no use beating around the bush.” V propped her free arm on her hip. It made her look bigger than she felt. “I’m dying, again. Six months is what I have left.”</p><p>The silence was crushing, more so than when she first laid eyes on the report. She cleared her throat.</p><p>“What will you do next?” Misty asked.</p><p>V scraped the sole of her boot against the floor. She turned to Goro. “How’s the sitch in Chiba-11?”</p><p>“It has the highest rate of homicide in Japan,” Goro said as he rubbed his hands together. “So I would say business as usual.”</p><p>“And the dojo?”</p><p>“I have made a phone call while you slept. It will be arranged, but—”</p><p>“Aright then, off to Chiba we go.”</p><p>Goro stood. “V, now is not the time for impulses. The dojo can wait. We must take you to a professional.”</p><p>“And waste my final days on the road? I’m not going back to ‘saka. Militech is as professional as it gets. Unless you have a better option?”</p><p>“…I do not have one, but we will find another. We have to.”</p><p>V sighed. “Goro…I spent the last year chasing leads. Look what became of it. For once I want to get out there and just <em>do something</em>. You know, accomplish something I can be proud of. I don’t have a grand vision of my own, so I’m riding along yours whether you like it or not.”</p><p>She got out the key to Jackie’s Arch and gave it to Misty. “I can’t take this where I’m going.”</p><p>Misty accepted the key with care. Her fingers traced its silhouette as if she was touching someone who used to do the same. After a while she placed the key in her pocket and pulled out a white envelope.</p><p>“What’s this?” V held the envelope up to the light. The paper was thick but she could see a rectangular outline.</p><p>“It’s a tarot card. Think of it as a one card reading. Don’t open it unless you need it. I picked it blind this morning, from Jackie’s deck.”</p><p>V lowered the envelope. “Misty, I don’t know if—when I’ll come back. Your deck will be incomplete.”</p><p> “Maybe that’s a good thing. Ever since Jackie died this deck has been…” Misty shook her head. “The energy within has grown so fierce it scares me to use it. I need to take a break. I have faith you will return this card to me. By then I will be ready. Be careful, V. The world is not what it seems.”</p><p>V tucked the envelope into the inner pocket of her jacket. Vik had abandoned his data pad on the chair. He looked so lost. The man was a mean boxer and a one hell of a ripperdoc, but they all had something they weren’t good with. V pulled both him and Misty into a hug. This was much better than the voicemails last time. They all knew it was likely goodbye, but they wouldn’t say it. Saying it made it real. They would stick with the promised version, the one where she would return.</p><p>“Kid…” Vik said as he let go. “Never give up. You know I won’t.”</p><p>She nodded. Goro waited for her near the front door. She walked up to him and paused. She used to think that given the chance, she would gladly turn her back on this city. Now that she stood at the crossroad, all she could think about was the good times. The people around her united against this cruel place, determined to make something of themselves. All those memories, warm, homely, beautiful… She committed their faces to memory and stepped into the sun.</p><p>The first thing she did after leaving the clinic was call Meredith back. The woman gave her one hell of a lecture for failing something as simple as answering her goddam phone. She said her people were doing everything they could to find a solution. According to Meredith, this wasn’t over. V told her where she was headed. They promised to keep in touch.</p><p>Neither she nor Goro were the type to dally about. With a destination in mind, they headed straight for the airport. Goro stopped on the way for groceries while she waited in the cab. She had everything she needed on her person. It would be nice to catch up with the rest of the crew, but Kerry was out of town. The Aldecaldos had moved on from Night City, and Judy was still touring America. She had to remember to call them.</p><p>They boarded the return flight to Japan in tense silence. V couldn’t stop bouncing her legs. She refused to eat anything from the cabin crew and kept a hand on her monowire.</p><p>Goro had said she wasn’t under arrest, merely terminated from the company. It made no sense why Arasaka would let her slip. Sure, she was dying, but they had spent millions on her. She and Goro then repeated the same conversation they had on the space station. To him, ex-company personnel possessed no discernible recourses. It was natural Arasaka didn’t consider them to be a threat. V wished it was her inflated sense of self-importance, but with the way Arasaka tried to alter her engram, things must be deeper than that.</p><p>If his reasoning hadn’t convinced her then, it wouldn’t convince her now. Goro didn’t press the subject. When breakfast came and she refused to eat still, he opened the groceries he had bought. Inside rested a handful of mandarins. He peeled one for her. She ate it piece by piece, savouring the sweetness. Count down or no, before she could figure out what Arasaka wanted, and they always wanted something, she refused to let her guard down.</p><p>Had this been what Johnny felt like when all his loved ones told him he was crazy? Her idol, the legendary Rache Bartmoss had been a paranoid fucker too. Yet for all of Bartmoss’ brilliance, he died alone in a freezer over some stupid power failure. Then he got dumped in a landfill, where she, DeShawn, and Johnny all ended up. They were right, but none of them had a tombstone to call their own.</p><p>The flight landed smoothly. They caught a cab from the airport. As they drove, the city outside her window deteriorated until the pinnacle of human engineering was replaced by a rusted shadow. Then they kept going. The wheels turned and turned and turned until the cab AI refused to go further. They paid their fare and covered the rest of the journey on foot.</p><p>The cab had left them on a narrow street lined with abandoned shopfronts. A clearing lay at the end of it. The flood of light provided a moment of relief from the claw-like shadows formed by utility poles. It didn’t take long for them to reach it. The view beyond stopped her in her tracks.</p><p>She looked up, as far as her neck would bend. Towering before her were blocks after blocks of interlinked mega-buildings. It stretched as far as she could see. The structures were old. She recognised columns from the last century. Chunks of render flaked from the facades, forming a pale rain at her feet. There had once been ventilation gaps reserved between the buildings. Those were filled with illegal extensions. It transformed the facade into an impregnable wall. Night City had been known for its density, and she had braved the claustrophobic Tokyo. What existed before her was something else.</p><p>It occurred to V that for all her woes, she had never been to a real slum before. Goro led her into the open, which turned out to be a border the width of a city block. It formed a hard edge between Chiba-11 and its neighbours. Empty Petrochem tankers blocked the sidewalks. What remained of the road was more pothole than cement. Despite it being daytime they were the only ones out. They stayed close to the wall and looked for cover where possible. Goro explained that there were snipers on the roof. They targeted rival gangs, but it was better not to test them. After a stretch they passed a pair of squatters. They stared at the sky on a dirty mattress. Her scan results revealed they had been dead for some time, drug abuse.</p><p>She and Goro circled to the south of the district. There was a large gate of rusted steel. The canal must be near. She could smell the stench of chemicals. Goro walked up to the gate. He opened his pack and retrieved two gas masks. She gave him a questioning look but wore the one he gave her. After donning his mask, he turned to her one last time. “Are you sure you wish to enter?”</p><p>His eyes were green under the tinted acrylic mask. She nodded and scanned the area. There were five men seated behind the gate, in the shadow of the overpass. Goro gave them a stern glare and told her to stay close.</p><p>The men did nothing as they walked by, nor did they look away. Their gaze felt slimy. The men wouldn’t try anything, not when it was just the five of them. She and Goro each had more than half a mil worth of chrome chipped. Any functional scanner would reveal it was best not to fuck around.</p><p>When she was almost out of earshot, her translator picked up something.</p><p>“The man from @$% is back. He brought a friend.”</p><p>Her translator couldn’t make sense of the codename, but they meant Goro. They knew him. Did he return often? Goro led her through the junkyard that was the ground floor. Despite the obstacles, he remained glued to her upper left. The position was clear of her gun hand and afforded her optimal view of would be danger. True to his bodyguard roots, he maintained a careful pace, never straying far. It was cute. She appreciated the gesture, but it wasn’t necessary. Neuron degradation or no, she’d wring the neck of anyone who came close.</p><p>They climbed up two flights of unclad steps. The concrete was crumbling away, exposing the inner steel. First floor was where the homes began. Unlike Pacifica, Chiba-11 hadn’t been designed to one day be presentable. The interior of the mega-building was a skeleton. There were no walls, no running water, no sewerage, no ventilation. Curtains hung between structural columns divided the floor into a grid. There was a central walkway then an endless plane of fabric to either side. Small segments of it swayed to the breeze of foot traffic. They were makeshift doors. The segments intended to be fixed were weighed down by crates or chunks of concrete. Some of the spaces were silent as a grave. Others were lit from behind. The shadow of prostitutes bounced up and down the curtain, followed by grunts and pained yelps. Goro pulled her away.</p><p>The further they went, the worse things became. She passed a dozen cages stacked on top of each other. Each cage was no bigger than a bunk bed. There were blankets strewn inside, pillows, clothing, data pads… Some of them were empty, others had people sleeping inside. All of them were locked. She got why Goro brought the gas masks now. It protected them from toxic fumes and supplied a steady stream of oxygen. At the centre of the floor where daylight couldn’t hope to penetrate, air was a commodity. The readings she got straddled the line between deadly and almost breathable.</p><p>The mega-building was a miniaturised city. Past the centre of the floor was a section for commerce. Near a lightless stairwell, an oily Yakitori stand served customers on high stools. The fume was unbearable. A group of armed gangers appeared at the end of the corridor. Goro moved to her due left, shielding her from view. The group ignored them. They beelined for a man at the stand, kicked over his stool, and stomped on him after he fell. There were suppressed screams followed by gunfire. They ducked into the darkness of the stairwell.</p><p>Goro pressed forth. He seemed unaffected, but his shoulders were tense. V placed a hand on the small of his back and followed him up the steps. The scenes repeated themselves. Starvation, prostitutes, gang violence, and people who slept the day away, indifferent to it all.</p><p>Goro stopped before a walled room with a guard standing at attention. “I wish to speak with him.”</p><p>The guard bowed at Goro and let them in. The room was a work space. A man sat behind a desk next to a large window. He appeared to be in his sixties, but with gene-therapy his real age was hard to gauge. There was no need for gas masks in here. Goro took off his and walked until he stood three steps from the desk.</p><p>He bowed. “叔父さん<em>。</em>(Uncle.)”</p><p>She bit back her gasp. Instead of walking up with Goro, she stood next to the entrance and crossed her arms. Goro had never mentioned this man before. She suspected it wouldn’t be a long or pleasant conversation.</p><p>The man looked Goro from head to toe. After a spell he did the same to her. Observation was a two way street. She could see the resemblance. The man and Goro shared the same nose and forehead, but that was where the similarities ended. Age had stripped him of the fat in his cheeks. It gave him a gaunt look, not of a starving man, but one who was picky. And his eyes…there was no disdain in them, only a detached judgement as if she was a body in an ice tub. He wouldn’t strip her for parts, not yet.</p><p>“It’s futile. You change nothing,” the man rasped.</p><p>“I seek permission to purchase the land we have discussed. That is all,” Goro said.</p><p>Her fingers twitched with the urge to draw. Something about this man reminded her of Saburo. She didn’t know how much Goro had told him. He seemed to be of some importance. Despite the non-transactional nature of the dojo, Goro would need his blessing to conduct business here.</p><p>“Very well.” To her surprise the man nodded. “You have always been stubborn. Time will show you the way, like it has shown you the way home.”</p><p>Goro bowed again. He left without a backward glance. She followed suit. When she was half way through the door she felt eyes on her back. She locked gaze with the man. He made no effort to hide his scorn. Neither did she. After sufficient time has passed, she arched a single brow and marched from the room.</p><p>“He does not believe I will succeed,” Goro said after they returned to the stairwell.</p><p>V shrugged. “Doesn’t believe in much, I gather.”</p><p>Goro didn’t continue the subject. He led her to a rusty garage at ground floor. Inside parked a time-worn bike. It was no Jackie’s Arch, but it would do the job. They rode from the mega-building with smoke in their hair. All along the streets, similar complexes lined up one after the other like blocks from a child’s toy. She had no interest in exploring the neighbourhoods. If she had seen one of them, she had seen all of them.</p><p>It wasn’t until they were at the edge of the district that Goro slowed. Any further and they’d slide into the crater filled wastelands. He pulled up next to a gated property. Time had stained the white walls into a muddy shade of grey. As he searched for the access pad, V hopped off the bike to do a perimeter sweep. She tripped on the first step. The next thing she registered was her head colliding with the pavement.</p><p>“V!” Goro rushed to her side. He cradled her head against his chest. Red splotches bloomed on his shirt. They were coming from her nose. She felt no pain, as if she was an incorporeal spirit. It took some time for her digitised soul to find her shell. Then the migraine returned.</p><p>“It is not too late to stop.” Goro dabbed at the blood with his sleeve. He clenched his jaw as he took in the property. The walls were built high. It was impossible to see beyond it. After a moment of thought, he turned back to her. “Let us go somewhere warm, with good food and a pleasant view. I promised to take care of you. We can spend time doing anything you want.”</p><p>“Anything I want, huh?” V pushed herself up. She clamped a hand over her nose and walked to the front gate with Goro’s help. “Well, what I want is to help you set up. I need to know you’ll be okay after I…”</p><p>The arm around her waist tightened. Goro unlocked the gate with an eight digit code. She stumbled through. The entry opened onto a courtyard littered with rubbish. A dried up pond bent around what was now a forest of tree stumps. There used to be a garden here. Large stones enclosed what could be described as beds. They crossed a small wooden bridge over the crescent shaped waterway. Dead leaves, plastic bottles, and washed off dirt had settled to the bottom of the pond. The structures didn’t fare much better. Of the three clusters of rooms only the main hall survived. Acid rain had seeped past the roof tiles and corroded the wooden beams, collapsing much of the structure. It would seem the boundary wall was the item in best condition.</p><p>As much as she wanted to be optimistic, the place looked like the aftermath of a gang shootout. If they dug through the trash, they could probably find a couple of dud grenades. After inspecting the wreckage, she and Goro returned across the bridge. They sat among the tree stumps and watched the setting sun.</p><p>“We could plant a cherry blossom tree here,” Goro said after a while.</p><p>“Shit, Goro, shootin’ for the stars. That’ll cost more than the land.” She leaned against one of the larger stumps and crossed her legs. Her nose bleed had stopped. She picked at the crusty blood. Goro opened his bag pack, and like the prepared man he was, got out a wet wipe.</p><p>“It is something to work toward,” he said as he cleaned her face.</p><p>“There’s plenty of room for expansion, I’ll give you that.”</p><p>Goro smiled. He tossed the wipe aside and cupped her face with his hand. “We will plant the tree as a sapling. Then rest under its shade when we grow old.”</p><p>A vice clamped around her heart. She didn’t know why he said that. They both knew when it came to growing old, there was no we.</p><p>Perhaps the shock on her face was too much. Goro looked away. He then forced himself to meet her gaze again. Without breaking eye contact, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small box.  Inside rested a simple gold band. He was already on one knee.</p><p>“I had wanted to do it somewhere nicer, in a field of cherry blossoms, perhaps, but it did not feel right.”</p><p>The courtyard was quiet, almost eerily so. Away from traffic, no roar of engine or screech of wheel could distract her from her heartbeat. Wildlife had long disappeared from Night City. They met the same fate here.</p><p>“I know you are a woman of refined taste. I had wanted to impress you, but everything in Tokyo was a disguise. Arasaka gave me those things. They told me those were the qualities of a successful man. You know of the things I do. Now you have seen the place that raised me. This is who I am.”</p><p>The more he talked, the more she was sure he couldn’t have possibly thought this through. She was cursed with inoperable neuron degradation. She might feel better at first, but then the illness would grow fierce, attack in full force. Her final weeks she would spend in bed. He had said that himself. She could agree to the proposal, but he would be marrying a corpse. She couldn’t do that to him.</p><p>She covered the ring. “Goro, I’m dying.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“It’s bad. I can feel it.”</p><p>“That changes nothing.”</p><p>“Well, it should!” She tried to close the box but he wouldn’t let her. “I’ll be dead in six months, there’s no point—”</p><p>“But there is!”</p><p>The rest of her sentence was lost. Goro has never raised his voice at her before. Not even when she berated Arasaka. She let go of the box. Goro caught her hand before it could fall to her side.</p><p>“I apologise.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It is just—on my way to Night City, after the truth had been revealed, I could think of nothing but how all this time I have led you astray. You have done more for me than anyone, but without Arasaka, I have nothing to give in return.</p><p>“I wish to spend the rest of my days with you. Please, don’t deny me this chance. If you do not wish to, simply refuse. I will never bring it up again. An answer; that is all I ask.”</p><p>Barely a day had passed, but the grime of travel managed to settle into the wrinkles on his face. His oiled top knot was beginning to dry. Strands of hair separated from the backward sweep, falling across his temple. His cheeks were speckled with regrowth from his beard. He had said to her there would be no more squatting, no more second rate food. Yet the junkyard around them spoke of a future much worse.</p><p>That was all he had now, a dream and a promise.</p><p>V asked herself if that was enough.</p><p>“Yes.” She tried to blink away the moisture in her eyes. “I wish I could stay forever.”</p><p>Goro let out the breath he had been holding. He plucked the ring from the cushions and slid it onto her finger. It fit perfectly. If someone had asked her two years ago what it would take for her to give up the bachelorette life, she would’ve listed half of Night City. As it turned out, all it took was a man who loved her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The Fool. That would be you... The Fool symbolises the beginning of a journey. You brim with enthusiasm, yet remain unaware of both your capabilities and the threats you face.” – Misty Olszewski</p><p>I miss first seeing The Fool outside V's door. At the beginning of a journey, we have nothing, including wounds. The next update will come on the 28th of March. </p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. ACT III: The High Priestess</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V and Goro finalised the paperwork for the land the following day. Goro had insisted that her name be added to the title. Strangely enough, both of them used a fake ID. V did so because she had no choice. She was in Japan on a work visa. As she had shown her employer the middle finger, she could not remain in the country, let alone purchase land. Goro on the other hand…</p><p>Pre-sale checks were non-existent in a place like Chiba-11, but the ease of going incognito did not justify it. She knew why he had drawn the line between past and future. She decided not to comment on it. Trust, once broken, was gone forever.</p><p>V wiped her hands on her jeans. She had been tidying up the courtyard for the better half of the day. Goro left to borrow equipment from his chooms. He had been hesitant to let her out of sight. She assured him that she was experienced with this dying business and booted him out the front door.</p><p>No matter how long she stared at it, the state of the property still inspired a sense of dread. She had shovelled a mountain of trash beside her yet barely dented the pile in the pond. It would take time to fix this place, time she wasn’t sure she had.</p><p>The gates creaked open. Goro reversed a small truck through it.</p><p>“The first thing we should do is hire cleaners!” V yelled.</p><p>Through the rear-view, Goro shot her the dirtiest look he could master.</p><p>“Fine, fine…” V rolled up her sleeves and helped him unload the truck.</p><p>“As you people like to say, take it easy.” Goro gave her shoulder a light squeeze. He took the shovel and assigned her to excavator duties. Of the equipment they had unloaded, there were even two sets of PPE. If she wanted to be safe the first thing she would’ve done was to not become a merc, but the thought of taking precaution was amusing. She popped on a hard hat and gave the other one to Goro.</p><p>The bright yellow acrylic was every shade of silly next to his top-shelf chrome. She snickered and pecked him on the cheek. Goro had an incredible side profile, au naturel too. She tapped the silver dot embedded into his temple. “Sir, those cheekbones are illegal.”</p><p>“Why would my cheekbones be illegal?” Goro asked in that serious accent of his. “They are my own. I did not copy them from a trademarked profile.”</p><p>“Ugh.” V rolled her eyes so hard for a moment she thought her optics got stuck at the back of her skull. She jumped in the excavator and began to pull apart the larger piles of rubble.</p><p>There was no such thing as a slum junkyard, the entire district was one, but to avoid living in a trash heap she and Goro planned to drive the rubble elsewhere. Anyone who has had the rotten luck of sharing a ride with her would say she drove like a drunk gorilla. Luckily, there wasn’t much on the property to salvage. She piled the rubble next to the truck and repeated the process until she dismantled the worst of the junk.</p><p>Goro was determined to clear the pond. She worked around the yard. Once she got close to the main hall she parked the excavator next to the steps. Wind had covered the feet of the building with trash. Going straight in with machinery was too risky. She didn’t want to damage the foundation, wobbly as it was.</p><p>V circled the building to get a better look. Around the back was a collapsed shed. She lifted a piece of the roof and tossed it aside. Something caught her eye.</p><p>It was a hand, small and dirty. It took her a while to realise the hand was ‘ganic. The implications hit her. She lifted another piece of the rusted roof, revealing the thin arm attached to it. Her movements quickened. Before long she had tossed aside the rest of the roof. Buried beneath the shed was a little girl.</p><p>The kid had no eyes. They were replaced by red, glowing cybernetics, much like the ones Maelstrom preferred. The lights flashed hollow under the midday sun. Her lips were split. There were bruises on her face and neck. They didn’t look fatal, probably caused by the collapsed shed. She sported basic net running gear with a neuro socket. She couldn’t be more than ten years old. </p><p>A strange sense of trepidation hit V. It was as if she was seeing herself crawl from the landfill with a bullet in her head. Except the kid didn’t have a chip for second chances.</p><p>“Goro!” V yelled. She knelt beside the kid and checked her pulse. A purple vein bumped against her finger. The rhythm was weak but there. Goro rounded the corner still holding the shovel.</p><p>They took the kid to the district clinic. Describing the wreckage as a clinic was perhaps too generous. It was a hole in the wall, tucked away in an ally. A tired nurse took the kid to be examined. The waiting room was littered with empty beer bottles and used syringes. She swept a cracked MaxDoc from the bench and sat. Its upholstery had been slashed to bits. She could feel the steel mesh under her ass. Goro opted to stand.</p><p>There was nothing to do but wait. As the seconds ticked by, she caught a waft of copper. On the wall behind her was a red handprint, almost low enough to touch her jacket. She slouched, keeping a safe distance from it. A thin smear of watered down blood coated the floor, like someone had not quite mopped it up.</p><p>It was the aftermath of cyberpsychosis. With how young people were getting chipped, no wonder some of them end up going psycho. In Night City, she had turned in more than a dozen of them to Regina George. Getting chipped too much, too fast, too young, subpar chrome, shady ripperdocs, or just plain fucked in the head, the reasons went on. Some of the stories she unearthed were as infuriating as they were miserable. She wanted to strangle the psychos for believing blatant scams, but did they have a choice? Most of them were in so much shit it made going psycho the easy way out.</p><p>“Maiko? Anyone here for Maiko?” another nurse called.</p><p>“Yes,” Goro said, much to her surprise. She realised she didn’t even know the kid’s name.</p><p>The nurse led them to a patient room. There were nine beds, arranged in three rows. The kid had been placed in the far corner. They pushed past four beds with groaning burn victims. A man with his leg cast in plaster yelled into his phone. Her translator told her he would snap the spine of the person who had left him for dead.</p><p>The further they went, the dirtier the floor became. She waded through a trail of trash. SCOP wrappers, Eezy Beef containers, empty Bolshevik bottles and the odd dorph inhaler… She sped up. A clinic shouldn’t spook her; she had seen human cattle farms and shot up more than a handful of Scav hideouts. In truth, this place made her skin crawl. It was the same with Octavio’s ripper clinic in Santo Domingo. The trash, the grunts, the caked up blood... A clinic was a place of healing. These weren’t bad people. Why was it she wanted to run?</p><p>The kid looked even smaller tucked under the yellowing sheets. She had been hooked to a salt drip. The nurse gave them a rundown of the report, sent the bill, and went on her way. Bruises and cracked bones aside, the kid mainly suffered from malnutrition. She must’ve squatted in the wreckage until she and Goro took over. Out on the border of the wastes, it was a miracle she lasted this long by herself. Then the shed fell on her. If they had found her any later, there would’ve been no point to dig her out.</p><p>“We can’t stay here,” V said as she sent the report to Goro. They waited for the file to fly across cyberspace. The unspoken question remained. What should they do with the kid?</p><p>Goro tapped the IV tube. “We must take her.”</p><p>“Where, to our crusty motel?” She thought about it and added: “Suppose it’s better than a dump.”</p><p>Goro’s optics shone blue as he received the report. He scanned through it. “She is a squatter, with no next of kin. She needs a safe place to stay. That is what the dojo is for.”</p><p>V didn’t know about that. It was only a matter of time before the dojo welcomed its first student, but its purpose had been to teach adults. Taking a kid in was another level of responsibility. They would have a hand in shaping someone. Were they fit to do so, considering the cluster fuck that was their own lives? The alternative was to take the kid to an orphanage. They all grow into mercs or gangers there. Both she and Goro were prime examples. The kid had already saved up for chrome. God knew if she was chipped by a proper ripperdoc. V thought of the red handprint on the wall. Was there even an orphanage here?</p><p>“Why don’t we ask the person who should make the decision?” Goro pulled her from her thoughts. At the same time, bony fingers wrapped around her waist. She looked down and met a pair of glowing red eyes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>----------</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If Pacifica was a nightmare, Chiba-11 was hell. Since the beginning, it had been intended as a place of abandonment. People were left here to be forgotten. It was a slum through and through, with no hope of evolving beyond that. Goro was onto something. She recalled what he had said to her in Night City.</p><p>
  <em>You oppose Arasaka, but offer no worthy alternatives. </em>
</p><p>Well, here it was: the alternative, muddy as all fuck and held together by duct tape, but an alternative, no less.</p><p>V spat on her palm as her hands slipped from the shovel for the zillionth time. They were digging holes for the footings of the new structure. They planned to reinstate the rooms that had collapsed over the decades. That meant building them from scratch again. A month had passed since they first set foot on the land. One month of cleaning, ordering materials, and digging, during which she filed her nails to her nail bed after thorough contemplation. Not even becoming a merc convinced her to give up her silver talons. </p><p>V wiped the sweat from her brows. Her blisters had popped. It smelt rancid. Who knew the junction between her palm and her ballistic coprocessor was so delicate? Goro dug next to her, and beside him, little Maiko. The kid had chosen to come with them. That or she wanted to go back to the closest thing she had to home. It was hard to tell. Maiko had a smaller shovel of her own. She piled the dirt Goro dug up into a bucket. Five filled buckets lined up next to her. Once she filled the last of Goro’s buckets she would switch to V’s side as Goro emptied them. For a kid she was pulling her own weight and then some.</p><p>Maiko was a strange kid, or decidedly normal, depending from which angle one looked at it. For a child she didn’t speak, let alone whine or complain. She spent most of her free time sleeping or staring at the garden of stumps. When she had to say something she did so with bits of broken Japanese, like she was remembering how to talk again. But for a resident of Chiba-11 she was placid, as if she had accepted her lot and was ready to move on with the next phase, be it adulthood or the afterlife. She reminded her of Viktor, but Viktor was an old man with his dreams burnt to embers. Maiko had not yet seen her first decade.</p><p>They made Maiko the first honorary resident of the dojo, even before her and Goro. The kid barely acknowledged it. She ate packed foods in silence and worked without being told to. If V was to be honest, Maiko unnerved her. She was different from any street kids V had seen. Take Jackie for example. He was born with not two sheets of Eddies to rub together, but he had spark. He had a vision so grandiose it burned in his lungs when he ran on empty. Maiko had barely lived, yet she was ready to die.</p><p>V called it quits when her blisters started to bleed. ‘Fragile net runner hands’, Goro had called them. It was embarrassing but true. Despite her rifle use the toughest housework her hands had seen was chucking the take out containers. V and Maiko took a seat on the elevated walkway of the main hall. It wrapped around the structure. After clearing the trash they had found it miraculously intact. The property once boasted extensive plumbing. All they had to do was figure out where the leaks were, replace the cracked pipes and they’d have running water again. Ten grand Kiroshi optics, used to scan leaks. V chuckled at the idea.</p><p>In the courtyard Goro worked tirelessly to tidy away the tools. She told him to just leave them. They would use them again tomorrow. To which Goro replied with an undignified humph. She watched him lug the tools into a neat pile and was overwhelmed with a strange sense of contentment.</p><p>They still didn’t have much, but the three of them was ready to move on from the motel. They already had electricity. Once they got the water up and running they could camp in the main hall until they restored the other rooms. It would be the worst dump she has ever slept in. Even her Watson apartment was better than this, let alone her City Centre home before she got fired. Yet she doesn’t find herself comparing the three. She had lost her hormone regulators, but she doesn’t need them anymore. The blisters had moved on from her mouth to her hands. She slept at nightfall and rose at the crack of dawn, not because she had nothing on at night, but because she had too much planned tomorrow. Repairing the dojo was backbreaking but simple work. There was no scheming, no bloodshed. They would build brick by brick, and tomorrow their home would become even better than what it was today.</p><p>Was this the inner peace pilgrims waxed poetic about?</p><p>V turned to Maiko. “Hey kid, what do you say I teach you net running, once we move outta that motel?”</p><p>Maiko regarded her with those glowing red eyes. Cosmetic surgeons said that eyes were the window to a person’s soul. V was getting good at reading expressions from a set of LEDs.</p><p>“You would…do that?”</p><p>“Of course, that’s what this place is for, learning and discovery.” V rummaged through in her pockets. She had one more treat left. It was a piece of candied real apple, about the size of her thumb. She held it up to Maiko. The treat was the biggest luxury she would allow herself nowadays. She and Goro always took Maiko with them when they went to resupply. The kid never got anything. Perhaps that had been an oversight on their part. What would a person who had never been to a store before get? Everything or nothing.</p><p>Maiko popped the candied fruit in her mouth. Smart. Better enjoy something before others could ruin it. She chewed curiously then stopped. Just when V thought she didn’t like it, a small smile crept onto her face. It was faint and barely there, but the first sign of joy V had seen on her.</p><p>V gave Maiko a pat on the shoulder. The kid didn’t shy away. They basked in the afternoon sun. Then Goro walked over. “V, a word.”</p><p>She scanned the area out of habit. Nothing was amiss. She left Maiko on the walkway and followed Goro to the edge of the property. Her partner loosened his top knot. It had been half undone from the day’s work. There were chunks of dirt tangled in his salt and pepper locks. She helped him pick them out.</p><p>Goro kissed her cheek. There was a cold glint in his eyes.</p><p>“Arasaka,” she said.</p><p>Goro nodded. He sent something across. It was a company letter urging him to return to headquarters for debrief. Termination of employment meant the removal of all company cyberware. They would rip the top-shelf chrome from his body and plug the holes with a few hunks of plastic.</p><p>Her stomach churned at the thought. A resentful soldier was a ticking time bomb. To rid themselves of the problem they have agreed to release him into the wilds, but not before they could strip the last component of value from him. Goro had served them diligently for nearly four decades. What a fine capitalist hell.</p><p>“They want to do the same to you,” Goro said quietly.</p><p>“The next time I step into that place, I’m burning it to the fucking ground.”</p><p>“Which is why I suspect they did not persist.” Goro sighed. He rubbed the front of his neck, where the chrome cables sat. She had asked him what they did. While online, the wares increased lung capacity and made him near immune to throat attacks. Without them, he would have to learn how to breathe again.</p><p>His sentiment didn’t last. “I will fly to Tokyo briefly. Due to the extent of my modifications, Arasaka will need three days to operate. Stay here. I will return before the week is out.”</p><p>A deep chill seeped from her heart. It froze her airways. The lack of oxygen made her hyper alert, then jittery all over. She has had this feeling before, seconds from death. Having Arasaka operate on Goro didn’t sit right with her. Their reason was legitimate, standard procedure in most corps, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong. Was she being irrational? Arasaka had been radio silent since her escape. Had they truly forgotten about her?</p><p>“Goro, I—” She bit her bottom lip. “Let’s just forget about them, disappear. I’ll swap out your transmitter and bury you under a thick sheet of ICE.”</p><p>Goro shook his head. “No one leaves Arasaka through the back door. They will track us here. We may be able to take the risk, but Maiko, and all those who come after her cannot. It is better to part on agreeable terms.”</p><p>He was making a lot of sense. V crossed her arms and kicked the dirt. She wished it was that simple.</p><p>“I know you do not trust them. I feel the same, but we must see this through.” Goro lifted her chin so she would look at him. “The procedures are scheduled during the day. I will call, every night until I return. Do not worry for me.”</p><p>She stood on her toes and kissed him. No matter how many times she did it, his touch still made her heart flutter. “Alright, but keep your eyes peeled. Any sign of trouble, you delta the fuck outta there.”</p><p>Goro smiled. “I am not so helpless.”</p><p>“Is that so? Remember who dragged your ass outta three-oh-three?”</p><p>“There was no dragging involved. Plus, I enjoyed seeing you come to my rescue.”</p><p>V chuckled. The corners of her mouth fell sooner than she would’ve liked. She ran her thumb over the chrome line on Goro’s cheekbone. After some thought, she took off the dream catcher pendant Misty made for her: the one with the bullet from her skull. “This could be seen as an omen of bad luck, but I’d say it’s my lucky charm. Not a lot of people survive a bullet to the head.” She looped the pendant over his head and adjusted it until the bullet rested in front of his chest. “So here’s what I ask of you, be careful, and <em>survive</em>.”</p><p>Goro kissed her hand. “I will. I promise.”</p><p>Once the decision was made, there was no point dragging it out. Time was of the essence for both of them. Goro left the dojo that night with nothing but the clothes on his back. She waited in the motel room biting her nails until Goro called, back in the safety of his apartment.</p><p>He had promised to call every night until he returned.</p><p>On the second night, he doesn’t.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The High Priestess is a card of mystery. It shows how all our secrets hang by a delicate thread and the struggle between common sense and intuition.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal </p><p>Welcome to ACT III. We are approaching the pointy end. The next update will come on the 11th of April. </p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. The Moon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Thirteen missed calls later, V jumped on the next flight to Tokyo. The city outside her window shone like a thousand shattered suns. She didn’t have the heart to admire it. Goro promised to call. Something went wrong.</p><p>It was dangerous for her to return. Of all the metropolises Arasaka had sunken its teeth deepest here. Security, banking, and manufacturing had been the three pillars atop which Saburo built his empire, but the Arasaka of today had evolved into a different beast. In 2078 Saburo could nuke cities and sway elections. He had woven his company into the very fabric of life. Arasaka was a part of existence. Despite the risks V could think of no alternative. No one in Japan could do this on her behalf. She’d be damned if she lost Goro so close to final death.</p><p>She wiped the cameras as soon as she left the airport. Tugging the hood of her jacket lower, she hotwired a car and tore out its GPS. There were eyes on her. She could feel it. It might be she was going psycho. Against all odds she had survived blow after blow. That had got to leave its mark. But what if she wasn’t? The implications were much worse. She couldn’t afford to be wrong. Just this once she would listen to her gut.</p><p>For the lack of a better option, she would trace Goro from the place he was last seen. The drive to the Arasaka apartment complex was a short one. She parked in the next street and completed the final leg of her journey on foot. She walked slowly. There were cameras everywhere. Street surveillance, shop feeds, the occasional tourist selfie… She erased them all. If there was a V, she didn’t exist in Tokyo.</p><p>She slid past the AI receptionist without a problem. Top shelf Kiroshi optics scrambled facial recognition, but she must act quickly. On the spot patch jobs were sloppy. If someone was looking, sooner or later they’d find the holes. A skilled runner could track her here within the hour.</p><p>The door to Goro’s apartment was locked, the codes buried under impressive ICE. She picked through it line by line. When the door unlocked she didn’t rush to open it. She Pinged the lock. There were pinpoint cameras hidden inside the apartment. She looped the feed to replay the hour of footage before she arrived. Through the door her scanner picked up a roof turret and two trap wires. She disarmed them remotely.</p><p>Her shoulder collided with the door frame when she finally stepped inside. She was feeling faint. Neuron degradation was a silent killer. She had recovered as much as her tattered brain would allow. Apparently that meant thirty minutes of net running. She pinched the bridge of her nose and waited for her nausea to settle.</p><p>Goro’s apartment appeared exactly how he would’ve left it. The tatami panels were immaculate, with not a speck of dust on them. The air smelt of old cypress incense. It was his preferred brand. Nothing was amiss, except the lights were off, the stove was cold, and the man she sought gone.</p><p>She shed her backpack. It contained her disassembled Widow Maker and a few bottles of solutions. She got out the luminol bottle and sprayed the apartment with it. She hadn’t turned the lights on. The shutters blocked any external light. In pitch darkness, the luminol reacted with old blood, glowing palely. There were small stains in the bathroom and a large one in the living. Hers, if she recalled correctly.</p><p>Forty-five minutes later she slumped onto the couch. There was no sign of struggle. Goro left willingly, never to return. It made sense. The prime time to act would be while he was under for the surgery. Arasaka has had twenty-four hours. He could be anywhere by now.</p><p>She tugged her hair, hard enough to pull some out. If there was nothing in the apartment, where else could she search for clues? Goro lived a restrained life. It was his apartment and work. Going to Arasaka Tower was suicide. Plus there was no guarantee Goro had been sent there. She re-read the request for debrief letter. It didn’t mention a location. Arasaka must’ve contacted Goro after he checked in.</p><p><em>Think, V, think</em>. The clock was ticking.</p><p>Drawing blank, she could do nothing but stare at the discoloured patch at her feet. It was her blood, sunken into the tatami from when she collapsed. Goro hasn’t had time to hire cleaners. For a stain this deep she didn’t need the luminol. She scraped the patch with her foot. Funny how she came to sit in the same spot she did last time. Though she was no longer expecting anyone, and the ghost in her mind had moved on.</p><p>She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Sentiments aside, this was clearly the best seat in the house. She had a clear view of the door, with her back against solid wall, resting against a comfortable cushion. What more could a merc ask for? Goro preferred the perpendicular couch, with his back to…the corridor.</p><p>She paused. With the apartment dark the bathroom had disappeared. The corridor seemed endless, like the gate to the afterlife. How odd. She switched to the other couch, with her back now facing the corridor. All the hairs on her neck stood. In this seat she had limited spatial awareness. Her six was exposed. Intruders could easily sneak up on her.</p><p>There was a balcony connected to the bedroom. It was trapped like the other exits, but it wasn’t fail proof. She managed to break in, didn’t she? Goro was a trained killer. Why would he leave himself open like this? Come to think of it, when they were out in public, he chose the same seats she did. This spot was the only exception. What made it so special?</p><p>She scanned the room from the vantage point Goro would have. Facing forward, she couldn’t see the corridor. With some effort she made out the silhouette of the kitchen. The front door was barely inside her peripheral vision. None of those things jumped out. What grabbed her eyes was a decent sized TV hung on the back wall.</p><p>Interesting…of all the seats in the house, this one had the best view of the screen. Goro didn’t watch the news; even an Arasaka loyalist like him knew it was pointless propaganda. He was no fan of action flicks, nor did he dabble in stocks. She crossed her arms and stared at the dark screen. It looked identical to any other TV, but there was something familiar about it, like she had seen it before, in another form.</p><p>She turned the lights on. With the ceiling LEDs beaming down on it, the screen reflected a subtle sheen. It was mostly blue, a little green if she squinted. She crooked her head to the side. The change of angle jolted her memory. That was it. The first time she saw it, she had been on the fucking floor.</p><p>The realisation was a slap to the face. It was as if she had been out cold for a solid minute, with her head pressed against freezing marble tiles. Elizabeth had been on the couch, where she sat now, stoned as a wall. The similarities were uncanny. The last time she saw tech like this was at the Peralez apartment.</p><p>She sprung to her feet, vaulted over the coffee table and landed before the screen. She turned it on. There they were: pixels of blue, green, red, and yellow, arranged in the same hypnotising pattern. A bundle of cables ran from the TV to the nearest exterior wall, disappearing beyond it. She ran to the balcony, stuck her head out and scanned the cables. Now that she saw them, she couldn’t help but notice others. Cables painted into the same colour as the facade sprawled across the building like a camouflaged web. They linked hundreds of apartments and converged at a room on the top floor.</p><p>Her heart hammered against her ribcage. The closest thing she could grab hold of was a waste pipe that ran down the building. Her blisters stung as her hands wrapped around the aged plastic. She did not falter. Combat hardened muscles pulled her up the pipe. She passed level after level of apartments. Some of them were quiet, in others the TV was on.</p><p>She hurried along. With the wind on her back, she reached the top of the pipe. This was where the cables led. She searched for a way in. To her right was a balcony. It was smaller than the others. She would have to jump to reach it. Swallowing dryly, she gauged the drop. Greater Tokyo was a long way down.</p><p>Having lived thrice, if her journey ended here it would have to be enough. She jumped. Her fingers clamped around the edge of the balcony. She nearly lost her grip to forward momentum. She tensed her legs and slowed the swing. Eventually she came to a stop. She tensed her core and hauled herself over the rails. There was no time to breathe. She scanned the room beyond the door. There was a single runner inside, jacked hard into the web. No cameras.</p><p>Contagion had been her go-to quickhack. Given medical attention, the victims could make a full recovery. In this case, she would make sure the man never ran again. She burned his synapses. A waft of singed flesh escaped the room, slowly becoming one with the night.</p><p>The door opened softly. She passed the convulsing corpse. It was a typical back of house tech room, dark, with padded walls and a net running chair. There was a grid of monitors on the wall. Unlike the surveillance niche in the Peralez apartment, each monitor was assigned to a different household. In some there was a single suit, in others a pair. Once in a while she would find an entire family, with grandparents, children, sometimes infants gathered around the TV. They stared at the screen blankly, their faces bathed in a hypnotising swathe of light.</p><p>She was breathing hard now. How long have they been doing this? How many people were they affecting? The TV in her ex-apartment had been normal. She would’ve noticed if it wasn’t. Of course, why waste tech like this on low-tier grinders? Building A was where the execs lived. It had always seemed odd to her that Arasaka, especially the Japan branch had such loyal management. She credited the trend to cultural norms and childhood propaganda. How could she have been so blind? Arasaka tried to alter her. Was it such a far stretch they’d try and change others?</p><p>But why hadn’t she felt anything? At the Peralez apartment she keeled over in front of the control room. There had been nausea, a Relic malfunction—</p><p>Then it hit her. Of course she felt nothing. She was a goddam engram.</p><p>She sunk to her knees. All the clues were there. She managed to miss every single one of them. Goro had never seen tech like this, but she sniffed out that surveillance room for the now Mayor of Night City. She should’ve known. If she had just paid more attention—</p><p>“Ah!” Dark static tore apart her vision. It could be the wavelengths in this room, or the fact she hadn’t done a single thing right and regret was eating her from the inside out. There was a loud snap, followed by images of people, places. Scenes from another life glitched in and out of view. Then darkness.</p><p>When she came to be, she had left her reconstructed shell. Her feet hovered above a black sea of data. In the distance was a blue pyramid. Blocks of code converged beneath her, forming a bridge that led her to it. At its peak, a yellow beam of energy, bright enough to burn, shot toward a void-like sky. At the base of the beam stood a man. She hadn’t seen him since the nuke on her engram. She had been so sure he was gone.</p><p>
  <em>They are cutting a piece of us out. That’ll leave a hole. Forever.</em>
</p><p>He wasn’t even a ghost anymore. Johnny Silverhand, Night City legend was a memory, a fault in her plastic brain. With but a thought, she was beside him. She tapped his shoulder. He turned harshly, withdrawing from her touch. The code blocks crumbled apart. She fell until a bench materialised beneath her. Pixels converged in the shape of trees, signposts, pedestrians. The scene no longer camouflaged as the real world. Pixels flaked from the props, drifting toward the black sky. What she saw was a replica of what had once been real, like her.</p><p>She recognised this place. It was Pacifica, right outside the chapel. Johnny sat next to her, but instead of disappointment his face was one of silent rage. <em>Ah, there it is—the crusade. Get to Mikoshi, smash the system</em>, she heard herself say. She dragged out the words, light and mocking.</p><p>Johnny glared at her. Through the red aviator’s, his eyes were two pools of blood. <em>Ok, I’ll tell ya why I wanna destroy Arasaka, but I’ll only tell ya once</em>. He shot to his feet. Beyond him sprawled the pixelated skeleton of a beautiful city. Yellow palm trees swayed in the seaside breeze. She remembered the colour of the sea. So far removed from any functional industry, it was almost blue. Pacifica had once been the land of promise, now nothing more than empty malls.</p><p>
  <em>I saw corps strip farmers of water…and eventually of land. Saw them transform Night City into a machine fuelled by people’s crushed spirits, broken dreams and emptied pockets. Corps’ve long controlled our lives, taken lots…and now they’re after our souls! </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>----------</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She jerked awake.</p><p>It took some time for her digitised soul to reconnect with her body. She was on the floor. Above her, the grid of monitors displayed static. The corpse of the runner lay where she left him, his limbs splayed but stiff.</p><p><em>Johnny? </em>She called.</p><p>No one answered.</p><p>She climbed to her feet and immediately fell. When she collided with the floor a second time she stayed there. The wall of static flashed from white to grey to bottomless black. It seemed to mock her. She wanted to throw something at it, but god she was so tired. She doesn’t recall ever feeling this drained. For the life of her she could not move a finger, so she continued to stay there, staring at the mocking static.</p><p>Has she changed anything? Night City spun on without her. The fixers would find another merc to maintain the status quo. Without the dojo, it was hard to see Maiko making it through her teens. Joining Arasaka was still the best option. Goro was bound by the same unshakable vice.</p><p>The two of them would never finish the dojo. That had been all she wanted: her and Goro, together for six months. They’d build what they could and she’d leave this world knowing he had a chance at peace, however slight it might be. In the end what she wanted never mattered. What right did she have to save others?</p><p>She couldn’t even save herself.</p><p>The monitors above her fizzled alive. The glitch that interfered with the signal had passed. One by one, the surveillance feeds came back online. She was confronted by a wall of confused faces. Then the pattern returned. She watched their expressions transform from alert and curious to ones of dull contentment. For the briefest of moments, she too, had been afforded a glimpse at the truth. Only they had been too fleeting. When she had enough pieces to put together, it was already too late.</p><p>Was this it? All her pain, all her struggle: a meaningless blip.</p><p>With a grunt, she pushed herself up. She grabbed the nearest data pad and hurled it at the wall. It took out two monitors. Nothing changed on the remaining feeds. She looked around for something bigger. The net runner chair would do. She pushed the corpse off the chair and dismantled the armrest. Clutching the armrest like a club, she hobbled to the data units. She bought the armrest down on the first, denting the case. She landed blow after blow after blow, screaming and cursing. With a crack, a bout of electricity flashed across the monitors. The wall went black.</p><p>Panting, she tossed the mangled armrest aside. She was shaking all over, but her mind was calm. She called Meredith. The woman answered on the second ring.</p><p>“I’m going to need that chip.”</p><p>The line was quiet for a few seconds. Just when she thought Meredith had forgotten about her offer, the woman spoke. “I thought ‘saka was off limits.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck Arasaka</em>.”</p><p>A bone chilling laugh rang from the speakers, like the shrill of a trapped banshee, finally getting a renewed taste of freedom. “Give me twelve hours.”</p><p>The line went dead.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The Moon reminds us that reality is not always what it seems... [It] is also the card of dreams, desires, and of course, sleep – Death’s nightly ritual.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal </p><p>Yee-hawwwwww, folks we have a tower to burn! The next update will come on the 25th of April.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Judgement</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V didn’t know how Meredith convinced the board, but in the night that followed, Militech displayed a tactical readiness worthy of the world’s second most powerful corp. From execs to on-road transport, the company mobilised from top to bottom. An early response team transferred her to the Tokyo compound. They flooded her with guard schedules, access codes, blue prints… It was impressive. Militech almost had the entire Arasaka Tower mapped out. The only missing floors were Mikoshi and Saburo’s office.</p><p>That was where she came in.</p><p>“Didn’t expect to see you here.” V arched an eyebrow at the woman who emerged from the armoured truck. Meredith donned her signature black pencil dress, completed with a pair of tactical glasses. “It’s not safe.”</p><p>“We’re starting the Fifth Corporate War. If this backfires it won’t matter where I am.” Meredith retrieved a shard from her breast pocket. It was purple with blue circuit trickling down the surface like perspiration.</p><p>“That what I think it is?” V scanned the offered shard.</p><p>Meredith pinched it between her thumb and the knuckle of her index finger. It glistened against her black half-palm glove. “There’s no backing out. Not for any of us.”</p><p>V took the shard.</p><p>Meredith nodded sternly. “Plug this into their private network. We’ll take care of the rest.”</p><p>“Got it.”</p><p>As she turned to leave, Meredith called from behind. “And V, one more thing.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Try to come back alive?”</p><p>V laughed. With one decisive wave, she left for the armoury. “I’m counting on it.”</p><p>Militech spared no expenses for this mission. She had first pick from the best equipment Eddies could buy. She slipped into a black netrunning suit with green accents. It was hybridweave, heat-resistant, and padded with four layers of Armadillo lining. The pants were neotac dura-membrane, and the boots hardened with composite inserts. She ran her index finger across the blue screen of her antisurge infovisor. The piece had been sealed under thick corporate ICE but she would add her personal something to it. Trust was a currency she ran low on these nights.</p><p>She clipped three F-GX frag grenades around her belt. Widow Maker waited patiently in her pack. When she unzipped it, a white envelope fell from the opening. It was Misty’s reading. She had forgotten all about it.</p><p><em>Don’t open it unless you need it</em>.</p><p>If there had ever been a time she needed guidance, this was it. She tore open the flap. The card slipped free with a gentle tug. Jackie’s deck was a collection of harrowing sights. Her final reading was no exception. The card seemed heavier with the printed image revealed. A purple eye stared at her from each of the top corners. Between them was a glowing patch of fuchsia coloured sky. It was framed by dark spikes, like an open jaw, or the space between the devil’s wings. At the centre was a robed figure playing a horn. Wires extended from its skeletal jaw. Beneath it a dozen naked men and women crawled forth from their graves.</p><p><em>Judgement: </em>the card of resurrection and liberation.</p><p>She traced the details with her thumb. Her nail rose and fell to the embossed ridges. Misty has never failed her. It may not always be what she wanted to hear, but Misty has never failed her. She slid the card back inside the envelope. Sorry, Misty. It looked like she wouldn’t be returning the card after all.</p><p>She assembled Widow Maker and slung it across her back. Together, they made way for the open door like they had done a thousand times: alert, sure, and armed to the teeth.</p><p>
  <em>This was it, old friend. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>One last gig.</em>
</p><p>She climbed inside the truck with a squad of elite infiltrators. She was the only runner present. The men and women exchanged nods with her. No one bothered with niceties; the task they had signed up for came with a one way ticket. She finished coding her infovisor on the ride. The blue screen was a welcomed shield over her increasingly sensitive eyes. Its software married perfectly with her optics, minimising response time and maximising output. Dying was not without its perks. By scrambling her engram, Arasaka had used up their last back door. She was a free woman, a real fucking digi-ghost if she wished. All along she had been falling. She flailed her arms when what she should’ve done was brace for impact.</p><p>The truck stopped. The back opened and she jumped into the night. Arasaka Tower was the same lifeless monolith from her dreams. There were two guards out front. She greeted one with a fully charged armour piercing bullet. A squad mate took down the second. She recalled the first and last gig she had planned on the immortal corporate gods. Back then she had been stupid, hopeful. She sat in the car with her first big-time fixer and couldn’t answer a simple question. She had the answer now, two years late. Widow Maker hummed against her palm, its weight reassuring. She charged up its chamber and shattered the front door.</p><p>
  <em>Blaze of glory, Dex. Blaze of fucking glory.</em>
</p><p>“Stop right there!” A group of guards were stationed in the atrium. The closest to the door raised his assault rifle.</p><p>“I don’t have an appointment.” Her ICE pick shattered his defences like an eggshell. Contagion crippled his system. “Tell Saburo I’m here to ruin his night.”</p><p>Her daemon spread to two more guards. They fell to the floor in a stiff clump. Her squad mates engaged the others in a hailstorm of bullets. She smirked as the alarms remained silent. Arasaka never found all her daemons. When she fled RnD she had uploaded her life’s work. Perhaps they thought petty property damage was all she had in mind. Oh, she was capable of much more than that.</p><p>One of the reasons Militech had chosen this time for the assault was to minimise civilian casualty, but more importantly, Saburo worked to a mad schedule. He was in a board meeting and therefore present with a room of people vital for Arasaka’s stability. While she admired Johnny’s gusto, she wasn’t a revolutionary. Corporate life had left its mark on her. She played for keeps. Destroying Arasaka permanently meant at a minimum Saburo and Hanako had to die. She would make sure that happened tonight.</p><p>The metal detector sang a chorus as they filtered past. There was no such thing as a device without backdoors. With each area breached, she gave Arasaka a taste of its own medicine. There were no alarms, no backup. They gunned down guard after guard and the tower remained still as if in a deep state of sleep. Then two mechs dropped from the ceiling. They crushed three of her squad mates beneath their feet. The rest of them ducked behind cover. It took her some time to breach the mechs. As the saying went, if one Short Circuit didn’t fry it, hit it with another. What remained of the squad reached the elevators within ten minutes of shattering the front door. As she stepped inside, Meredith called.</p><p>“Hanako’s in Kanagawa, but she’s jacked into the network. Hurry, V. If they catch wind of this they’ll end the meeting stat.” The woman in her feed was in a dark room. She smoked like a chimney. Behind her an army of net runners lay jacked into the net.</p><p>V swiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her face. “Trying.”</p><p>Meredith nodded, and the line was cut. The elevator shot skyward. She had taken this pod before, almost daily. What had once seemed like an inconsequential pop of the ears now wreaked havoc on her broken receptors. She knelt to gain some balance. With the rapid change in altitude, something wet dripped from her nose.</p><p>“Hey, you need a MaxDoc?” one of her squad mates asked.</p><p>V shook her head. She was riding a body past its expiry date, but she couldn’t flatline now. She had to go just a little further. All she needed was that tiny bit more.</p><p>The elevator opened onto a pair of surprised guards. She was the last to exit. Her squad mates disposed of any security as she scampered down the hall, bouncing from wall to wall. Her balance eventually returned. Saburo’s private floors appeared exactly how she remembered it: two stories, decked in timber, with a void piercing the centre. She led her squad mates up the slender steel steps. The catch with building identical towers was that if someone has been to one of them, they have been to all of them. Twice now she had ascended these steps, once as Johnny, and another on the tail of Hanako. For a place even Militech couldn’t map, she knew it like the back of her hand.</p><p>Saburo’s office lay at the end of the topmost floor. It was empty. She ignored the desk and turned left. The access point was hidden behind an operable smart screen.</p><p><em>Time to party like its 2023</em>.</p><p>She jacked in. Militech had a dark sense of humour. The virus had been dubbed Mass Liberator, a step above the Liberator model Johnny’s squad used. The upload was slow. She didn’t know how much longer her daemons in the surveillance network would last, but so far so good. Her optics flashed blue in tune with the access point. She was in.</p><p>The Arasaka family network was shrouded by the thickest ICE she had ever seen. It was a work of art. There were no repetitions in the code, only bytes after bytes of elegant and lethal traps. Alone she would never breach it, but standing behind her was all of Militech’s brightest. They were everywhere and nowhere, jacked into the net from Tokyo, Night City, Shanghai, London, New Delhi… A flash army of thousands marched across the information abyss. They cleared the path for her, permeating intrusion countermeasures like rain through cracked concrete. With her as the spearhead, they pierced the shroud.</p><p>One of the runners found Hanako’s link. Surveillance footage appeared on the infovisor. It was a hotel room. Hanako sat near the window, bathed under a blue light. Above her intricate hardware projected her silhouette across cyberspace. In the board meeting a few floors beneath V, she sat quietly beside Saburo who talked in her brother’s shell. She had been content to bury the murder of her father. Only after Yurinobu threatened her life did she think to ‘bring him to justice’; the heart of a clump of leeches, indeed.</p><p>A year ago, not a single person remotely interested in Arasaka believed in the emperor’s poisoning. Yet only one of them chose to avenge Saburo. Not his daughter, and certainly not his son, but a mere bodyguard who despite everything he has done for them, could not be granted a peaceful end.</p><p>In the hotel room the blinds were shut. Oda stood to the side, alert and still as a statue. V felt no remorse for what she was about to do, but she did feel a pang of sympathy. Oda would not take this well. He was the same as his teacher, loyal to a fault. But she couldn’t afford mercy. Not when none was shown to her.</p><p>She changed the position of the camera. Oda pinpointed the movement. He looked directly into the lens and his eyes met hers across the information abyss. Within a second his optics glowed red. A progress bar appeared to pluck Hanako from the network, but it was too late.</p><p>
  <em>Sorry, this ain’t personal. It’s pure biz.</em>
</p><p>Flames erupted from Hanako’s eyes. She toppled from the chair, landing on the carpet in a burst of flames. Her synapses burned until it charred her white and gold dress. Oda rushed to her side. His response had been text book perfection, but Hanako was beyond help. Sometimes there was nothing a person could do. V knew that too well.</p><p>She closed the surveillance interface after Hanako flatlined. The alarms blared. She had known this was coming, but the deafening sirens still made her hands shake. If she wanted a shot at survival, this was where she’d make her exit. But her work was only half done. She loaded a fresh magazine into Widow Maker. They had been fortunate enough to avoid the brunt of Arasaka’s might. Now they must shoot their way forth.</p><p>First response reached Saburo’s office within minutes. Things got messy quickly. As she entered the atrium a mech flew across the void and rammed two of her squad mates into the wall. They were crushed to pulp. She rolled to the side to find there was no cover. Three bullets hit her on the chest then another on her left thigh. Her ribs cracked under the force. Something hot and coppery gushed into her mouth. She had no time to spit. Gravity pulled her under. Then the moment stilled.</p><p>She entered a perpetual state of falling. It was her combat perception of time. Her reflexes kicked in and she released Cripple Movement. Her daemon beelined for the first guard she could see. She hasn’t had time to count how many there were, nor did she have time to pray. As the first of Arasaka security froze in place her optics zoomed to the back of the group. Contagion went next, then Short Circuit on the mid-section. Those who had been caught in the overlapping zone of two daemons fell with her.</p><p>The moment passed, and her head collided with the wooden floor. The impact scrambled her brain. There were gunfire and distant curses. She willed herself to stand, but couldn’t.</p><p>She didn’t expect to open her eyes again. Blacking out on the field was suicide. As it turned out she had been gone for mere seconds. Her faithful daemons continued to pin her foes in place. With a grunt, she released another Short Circuit. The last of the guards toppled over, their head clutched between their hands. On the other side of the atrium, what remained of her squad mates ignited the mech. There were only four of them left. The one closest to her noticed she was down. He stabbed her sternum with a MaxDoc.</p><p>She regained feeling in her core a moment later. She almost wished she hadn’t. Bouts of searing pain shot from her ribs to her brain. She couldn’t lift her head, so she checked the wounds by pressing them gently. Her core had been protected by her suit. The bullets pierced three layers of lining and got lodged in the forth. Lucky for her they hadn’t been fully charged. Her left thigh wasn’t doing as well. For increased mobility, limbs were a weak spot in the lining. The bullet managed to pierce her suit. It was a shallow wound. She would have to make do.</p><p>Her squad mate pulled her up. The painkillers kicked in. She shook her head clear of the fog and charged Widow Maker. They took the stairs down, lifts were easily hijacked. Behind the gate to floor 76 lay the Jungle. It was an authentic forest environment filled with near extinct flora. Complete with its own microclimate, the Jungle thrived regardless of external climate. This was where the board held their meetings.</p><p>They cut through the onslaught of guards. Her well positioned grenade ignited the bridge behind them. Reinforcements would have to take the long route or wade through vegetation. That should buy them time.</p><p>Another bullet grazed her arm. She took out the assailant with Synapse Burnout. Nausea hit her like the fist of a mech. She had well reached her limit. With every subsequent quickhack she felt the tear in her brain widen. She was bleeding everywhere, her thigh, her arms, even from her optics. The left half of her vision was bright red, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was filled with such a twisted sense of satisfaction it turned all pain into adrenalin.</p><p>Had this been what Johnny felt like, poisoned with so much hatred that he ached with an everlasting burn? They destroyed her. In return, she would burn them to the ground.</p><p>“Take a nap,” she said to the last guard standing between her and the conference table.</p><p>Her lone footsteps rang hollow against the suspended floor. She peered behind her. When had she become the last one standing? The board members crouched with their hands over their heads. A room of men and women who could shake the very foundation of society, huddled like frightened ducks. Only one man remained seated. From the head of the table, his gaze burned her very soul.</p><p>“You killed my daughter. You will pay, as did your associates.”</p><p>“I’m about to do a whole lot more than that you dead fuck.” She raised Widow Maker.</p><p>She should’ve done this a year ago. No, the moment she saw Saburo in the flesh. Her finger squeezed the trigger, not quite enough to pull it. A blade sank into her right shoulder. With it came a crippling shock. She fell to her knees. The blade had lodged into her collarbone, pinning her in place. Widow Maker slipped from her hands. She turned, wishing to look death in the eye. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her because it couldn’t be.</p><p>It was…Goro.</p><p>The man she sought stood behind her with his back to the light. He was dressed in a dark suit. His red optics burned against the shadow beneath his brows. A mantis blade popped from his right forearm, its tip deep in her shoulder. A few drops of her blood coated his cheekbone.</p><p>“Goro…?” she called, like she had done many times before. A polished oxford connected with her stomach. The force ripped the blade from her shoulder. She skited across the floor. Her head collided with the leg of the conference table, cracking her visor in half. It took out her hearing for a beat. Her cheek was pressed to the floor. Despite her glitching engram she felt the vibration of footsteps.</p><p>Overhead lighting chased away the shadows. It was as if the clock had been rewound. The man approaching her appeared even younger than when she first saw him in Konpeki. His skin was smoother, his salt and pepper hair jet black. Together they had been through hell and back. Recon work in the rain, squatting in his abandoned apartment, rebuilding the dojo... Rough living had left its mark. If she closed her eyes she could see his sunburnt cheeks, the frown lines when he was deep in thought, the crow’s feet when he smiled. They were parts of the Goro she knew and loved, but not of the man before her. What stood before her was a memory from a bygone era. He was polished, curated, lifeless; the wear and tear erased.</p><p>“Do you like what I have done with him?” Saburo asked from where he was seated. “Gene therapy is a rare reward, reserved for the most outstanding soldiers.”</p><p>“Thank you for this honour, Arasaka-sama.” Goro paused his advance to bow to the newly reincarnated god. “I will not fail you again.”</p><p>Saburo smiled. His glasses could not hide the mirth in his eyes. “You have served me diligently. You will continue to do so for many years to come.”</p><p>Goro retracted his mantis blade. The blood on the steel stained his sleeve. He lifted her by the neck. His features were cold. Didn’t he recognise her?</p><p>“Goro, please. Don’t you remember…Night City…the dojo…<em>us</em>…?” She kicked the air weakly.</p><p>“I have no words for a thief.” His grip tightened.</p><p>Static eroded the edge of her vision. Her fragile runner wares were no match against his might on the best of days. Except her partner would never hurt her, he was her shield and armour.</p><p>Saburo watched them coldly. “It is a pity Hellman could not be more discrete. I commend you for coming this far, but you change nothing. I will construct another body for my daughter. The era of Arasaka has just begun.” He turned to Goro. “Kill her.”</p><p>The hand around her throat squeezed. There were pins under her skull, prickling her brain. She still had her mono-wire. With a single swing she could slash his optics. But would she do that do him? She reached forth, like they did that day on the construction site. They had extended their arm fully and felt the thing they longed for most scrape the tip of their finger. They reached far, but not far enough.</p><p>This was the end for them: an old dog, and a husk out of time.</p><p>Her hand fell from his face. She was on the verge of the abyss. How tempting it was to give in to rest. Her gaze fell, and she saw something reflective on his chest. Through the haze of suffocation a silver circle shone against his black shirt.</p><p>It was her necklace, the one with the bullet taken from her brain. She couldn’t believe it. He might not know who it was from, or what it meant, but he wore it still.</p><p>“Goro…” The sight filled her with renewed strength. She reached forth again, touching the necklace, but not quite enough to grasp it. “Remember…<em>survive</em>.”</p><p>That would be her final request. In his line of work he would meet a brutal end. She wanted him to be happy, safe, content. But if those things were out of reach, survival was enough.</p><p>A gush of air rushed into her mouth. It cleared some of the static. Goro loosened his grip until he was simply holding her again. There was confusion in his eyes, then a hint of something else. He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. When it worsened he dropped her. She choked on the air she breathed in greedily. Goro clutched the necklace, his grip strong enough to crush it.</p><p>“Takemura.” Saburo rose from his seat. The other board members had scampered off. They were alone on the platform. From under the conference table, he drew a gun and aimed.</p><p>“Takemura, I order you to—” Saburo didn’t finish his sentence. Goro vanished from view, appearing before Saburo a split second later. A pair of mantis blades pierced his abdomen. Goro lifted him into the air as his gun slipped from his hand. He sank down the blade until his abdomen connected with Goro’s fists. He opened his mouth. Nothing came but blood. He choked on his last words, wanting to ask why, perhaps.</p><p>Goro didn’t give him the chance. With a grunt, his fists swung to the side, slicing Saburo in half.</p><p>“See you in hell, <em>kuso-ama</em>.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Judgement is the card of renewal. The angel blowing into the horn heralds resurrection and liberation.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal </p><p>The next update will come on the 9th of May.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. The Hanged Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Beta'ed by:<br/><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missaness/pseuds/Missaness/">Missaness</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her vision was blurry with blood. A few steps ahead, Goro panted with his fists in the air. Saburo’s blood coated his mantis blades. He swung his arms, painting a pair of crimson arcs on the floor. Then he was beside her. He peeled back the slashed lining of her suit as her head hung limp to the side. Her right shoulder was numb from blood loss. A small sting returned some feelings to it. She couldn’t tell what he was doing and she was too tired to look. She closed her eyes, soaking in his presence.</p><p>“No, V! Keep your eyes open!” He sounded so worried. She wanted to tell him that it was alright, things would be okay from here on out, but she couldn’t move her lips. He was shouting something. There was another sting near her heart. Fluid seeped into her lungs and she had to cough or choke on them. He rolled her to her side. She near coughed her lungs out.</p><p>Just a little further, then.</p><p>“V…” Goro helped her sit. He rested her head against his chest. There was a wet sheen over his eyes.</p><p>With some effort, she lifted her good arm and traced his bottom lip. “I thought you liked me coming to your rescue…”</p><p>A small smile broke the stiffness of his lips. He kissed her hand. “I am sorry.”</p><p>“…have you forgotten me?”</p><p>“Never.” He pressed his lips to hers. She shuddered at the touch. Goro tasted of mint and fresh plums. Some things never changed.</p><p>It was a chaste kiss, one they both savoured. He pulled away after planting another on her cheek. “My memories are returning, slowly. There are gaps. I woke in a laboratory. The nurses had said I renewed my contract willingly. The last thing I recall was returning from Chiba-11. I knew I had forgotten something important, but I could not remember it.” Goro winced as he shook his head. There was the sound of doors sliding open in the distance. He lifted her to her feet. “Come, I do not wish to die here.”</p><p>She slung her good arm over his shoulder. The four layers of Armadillo lining and her collarbone stopped the blade. If she had worn another suit, he would’ve severed her arm. She was fortunate to be alive, but being cleaved by an electrical mantis blade wasn’t something a MaxDoc could patch up. She needed surgical attention. Her gun hand was out of action for the night. Luckily Goro had been trained to shoot with both. He supported her with his right arm and aimed with his left.</p><p>The lull in netrunning gave her brain some much needed rest. She had allowed Militech access to her infovisor but not her optics. The sleek piece of tech now decorated the floor as shattered glass. Militech had been trying to reconnect with her. She let them in.</p><p>“Execs docking bay, now. There’s an army on your tail,” Meredith said. There was a slight quiver to her words.</p><p>That bad, huh?</p><p>“On it…” V grunted.</p><p>Being Saburo’s personal bodyguard came with privileges. Goro knew the tower like an extension of his body. He led her to a hidden elevator reserved for board members. The elevator closed, muting the screams. Too soon did the confined space become pin drop silent. She could hear the hum of gears, the pulse of blood in her brain. The sounds pressed against her skull. Her ex-disk was burning up.</p><p>She had to say something. “I killed Hanako.”</p><p>“I know,” Goro said. “We saw, in the board meeting.”</p><p>“And that sits alright with you?”</p><p>Goro gave her a strange look.</p><p>“You’re not gonna, uh, commit seppuku or something like that, right?” She chewed her bottom lip. What the hell was she saying? “I just didn’t think you’d do it. Saburo, I mean. You went through hell to avenge him.”</p><p>The arm around her waist tightened. Goro holstered his handgun and turned to face her. “V, you have always had a good impression of me. I thank you for it, but let me tell you why I had chosen Arasaka.” He cleared his throat. In the ensuing pause they passed two more floors.</p><p>“It was the fruit least rotten, picked from a tree of filth. I remained loyal, because that was expected of me. I had no alternative, for a world without order was chaos. That had been my life until I met you. You gave me purpose, something greater than myself to fight for. Today I killed an enemy, but more importantly I protected the person I love most. My honour is intact.”</p><p>She looked away. There was a tingle at the back of her optics. She squeezed her eyes shut. The elevator came to a stop. She blinked away the last of the tingle and stepped forth. “Let’s get out of this dump.”</p><p>“Agreed.”</p><p>Her daemons in the Arasaka network overrode security protocols. A Militech AV had docked. She and Goro climbed in as another squad of infiltrators covered them. The door closed and the AV took off. Arasaka tower shrunk until it because a glowing pillar in the distance. It was almost anti-climactic. There were no explosions, no mushroom clouds. On the surface things appeared calm and steady, like flat waves from a dark sea, but what lurked beneath it would shake the very foundations of life.</p><p>She leaned against Goro as Militech medics worked on her. One focused on stitching her shoulder close while another tended to the smaller wounds. After her injuries were cleaned and bandaged, the medics stabbed her shoulder with another MaxDoc. That was her fourth for the night. Despite it being a more potent model it worked slower than the previous three. Her body was running out of fuel to stitch itself back together.</p><p>“Where are we going?” she asked one of the medics.</p><p>“Back to base. Director Stout—” A familiar ringtone cut off his response.</p><p><em>Speaking of the devil…</em> V picked up. “Hey, we’ve been extracted, flying back to base as we speak.” The woman on the screen remained oddly quiet. “Meri?”</p><p>That pulled Meredith back to reality. She tore off her gloves and dragged a hand down her face. “You’re not going to believe what we fucking found.”</p><p>V’s optics received a request for connection. She accepted. When the static cleared her view of the AV was replaced by footage from an unknown camera. She had been granted remote control. The room it surveyed was big. Four rows of large transparent tubes dotted the floor. The tubes were pale blue and emitted a neon glow. Frost coated the glass. She couldn’t make out what was inside.</p><p>She zoomed in. The frost was thinner on the mid-section, revealing a patch of pale flesh. Long, slender limbs swayed to the current of the fluid. She tasted bile at the back of her throat. They were people. She was looking at a room of cryogenically preserved people.</p><p>Who were they? She searched them row by row. In one of the furthermost tubes, the frost revealed a face. It rendered her breath fast and shallow. Over her career she had seen a lot of messed up shit, but nothing come close to this. The woman inside the tube had slightly parted eyes. Black hair coiled around her neck like tendrils. An oxygen pipe extended from her mouth. She could almost feel the gagging sensation. Hidden in the depth of Arasaka, sealed beneath a thick layer of glass and ice, was…<em>her</em>.</p><p>She scanned the other tubes. She might not be able to see their face but the slash of black hair was identical.</p><p>“I’m guessing you know this place?” Meredith lit another cigarette.</p><p>V ground her back molars together. Of course she knew that place. Those tubes birthed her.</p><p>“A runner brought it to my attention. The facility’s on the outskirts of Tokyo. We counted twenty in that room. It contained the most mature bodies. The one next to it had upward of a hundred embryos. I won’t show you the basement, worse than a scav hideout.”</p><p>The frozen face of her chromeless body opened the floodgates. Pieces of information she had brushed aside previously chose that moment to resurface. It all made sense now. She wasn’t crazy, nor did she overthink her importance. Hadn’t Hellman told her she was a test subject? What was the purpose of a test subject? To see if things worked. Arasaka didn’t pursue her after the nuke on her engram because she was a forfeited prototype. Now that they had the data, it was time for mass production.</p><p>“They’re also rebuilding Smasher, no, a legion of him. Paired with a copy of you, ‘saka will have a top-tier runner and solo in every city. They’ll be unstoppable.” Meredith blew out a long stream of smoke.</p><p>V exited the camera. “Not if I do something about it.”</p><p>She shared the footage with Goro. He spent some time staring at it. When he left the feed he counted the remaining rounds in his handgun. “Return to base. I will end this.”</p><p>“No, I’m coming with you.”</p><p>“You are in no shape—”</p><p>“This is my fight. I <em>must</em> see it through.” She grabbed Goro’s hand. He only glanced at her shoulder. Despite the regained mobility she wouldn’t be able to shoot with it. If she was more concerned about her health she’d sit this one out, but ever since Goro cleaved her, there had been an expanding pit of emptiness in her chest. It was supressed by the MaxDoc, yet she knew it wouldn’t last. Her time was near.</p><p>She pushed the thought aside. Her enemies would come down with her. She’d claw her way there if need be. Now how would she go about destroying a hive-mind entity, with no tangible form and neigh limitless reincarnations? She had been mulling this over since she unearthed Johnny’s corpse in the landfill. The answer was simple: she must destroy their soul.</p><p>That had been Johnny’s mistake. He fought with more vigilance and bravery than any of them but he chose to destroy the physical expression of Arasaka. The tower had been one of many. Bodies could be rebuilt, symbols replaced, but when the soul departed, what remained was a worthless husk. </p><p>In his last moments Saburo reminded her of something important. There was a copy of his engram in Mikoshi, and if what he said about Hanako was correct, he had also digitised his daughter.</p><p>“If they’re building bodies at the facility it must also have access to Mikoshi. The Arasaka engrams and I have unfished business.” She pulled up a plan of the facility. There was an undocumented basement.</p><p>It was impossible to sway her on something like this. Goro nodded. The AV turned for the outskirts. Meredith stayed on the line while they prepped. V replenished her mags and grenade stash whereas Goro charged his mantis blade. With Goro’s help, she slipped into a new suit. The tight lining helped to keep the wound in place. She flexed her shoulder. Compared to a crippling injury, a dud limb was all she could hope for.</p><p>Outside the AV it began to rain. Fat droplets penetrated the smog, striking the window in grey streaks. It had been raining the night she met Hanako at Embers. The AV landed outside the facility.</p><p>“Reinforcements will meet you on site…good luck,” Meredith said. It was the first time she had done that. She didn’t strike V as the type to believe in something so fickle. She must really think they need it.</p><p>V nodded. “Take care of yourself, Meri.” With that, she signed off.</p><p>The facility appeared to be on lockdown. There was no illumination save for the red emergency signs. Moonlight dressed the walls. Good thing top shelf optics came with night vision.</p><p>She and Goro jumped the fence. Her reinforced tendons propelled her well clear of the electrical barbwire. A splatter of shadows landed behind them, Militech infiltrators. The best point of entry was just beyond their drop off point, but it remained some distance from the labs. Her hand was steady when she jacked into the access point, betraying not her racing heart. The gate to the facility swung open.</p><p>On the precipice of death or not, she could still pull her weight and then some.</p><p>Moonlight spilled into the corridor through the open gate, coating the floor in a silver rectangle. She stepped past it, Widow Maker loaded and ready. The butt of the rifle rested on her shoulder while her good arm adjusted the aim. The deeper they went, the darker it became. Hidden from the world, the corridor became a black void. The darkness felt thick on her skin, as if she was wading through water. Then the gate sealed shut behind them. An army of soldiers rounded the corner. They wasted no time to shoot.</p><p>Not that she expected Arasaka to take it lying down. She powered her OS to full capacity, quickhacks at the ready. She scanned the first target. For a moment she couldn’t make sense of the results. She moved onto the next, then the one after that. When the readings matched she halted her step. This couldn’t be it.</p><p>She scanned them again, but her first try had been accurate. The soldiers that filled the hall were one hundred percent organic, with not even optics for her to jam. Her quickhacks bounced from target to target. How was this possible? In 2078 everyone was chipped with some sort of chrome. She couldn’t remember the last time she had fought someone entirely ‘ganic, let alone an army of them. Then she remembered. She had heard of these soldiers before in counter-intel. They were like a dirty secret, whispered among runners in the dark. Specialist anti-net running personnel: when a runner saw them, they were fucked.</p><p>Her trigger finger tightened. Someone beat her to it. Goro dashed past her in a whirlwind of steel. He activated Sandevistan and in the blink of an eye, <em>vanished</em>. The sight was so bizarre she forgot to fire. He reappeared in the middle of two soldiers and with a swing of his left arm, decapitated one from behind. Electricity licked his mantis blades. The other soldier barely adjusted his aim before the tip of Goro’s right blade pierced his skull. The blade nailed his corpse to the wall. Two rounds came from further back. They hit air. Goro blitzed past the assailants in a blur, freeing their head from their body.</p><p>Organic tissue was the ultimate shield against combat quick hacking, but the downside to it was, well, being ‘ganic. Goro’s blade met no resistance. He cleaved through bone and armour alike. It occurred to her that she has never seen Goro in action with his full chrome online. Scuffles on the street, perhaps, but not in a situation where he was fighting for his life. No wonder he was respected unanimously, even by prideful men like Oda. He earned his place beside Saburo through sheer merit.</p><p>More soldiers pushed into the corridor. Goro let out a blood curdling laugh. That snapped her from her trance. She might not be able to hack the soldiers directly, but there were plenty of tech lying about. She took care of the doors and enemy runners while Goro made salad of the troops. Ground floor became a bloodbath. They reached the lab coated in gore.</p><p>“Quick, we have to destroy the copies before they come online.” She ran inside. Goro followed closely. They were the only ones who entered. The Militech infiltrators ran past the door and disappeared from view.</p><p>“Where are they going?” Goro asked after them.</p><p>She sealed the door shut. “The data fortress, access point is two floors down, next to Mikoshi. That thing has decade’s worth of lab results.” She jacked into the access pad, scrambling the cryogenic system. Militech might have begun this war for survival, but the purpose of a corporation was to generate profit. It’d be a cold day in hell they let those invaluable findings go to waste.</p><p>Goro cursed beneath his breath. She worked away in cyberspace, draining the bodies and exposing them to oxygen. She didn’t pay him much attention until the sound of a latch opening.</p><p>“What are you doing?” She turned to find him slashing at the restrains of one of the bodies. Out of water, the pale husk resembled a corpse more than it did a person. She shuddered to think she had once been just like it.</p><p>“This is your chance to start over,” Goro said as he pulled the tube from its mouth.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You need a new body, but after this facility is destroyed you may never find another.”</p><p>Her jaw dropped at his plan. She had abandoned the sentiment of walking away long ago, but he hadn’t given up. After everything that has happened he was still determined to save her. She took in the replica of her ‘ganic self, the way its hair fell across its face in a dark slash. The emptiness in her chest was growing. Exhaustion ate at her from the inside. Goro doesn’t beg with words. His eyes pleaded for her to stay. She wasn’t sure if she wanted yet another chance at life, but when has she ever denied him?</p><p>She nodded. Goro swung the replica over his shoulder. She unsealed the door, and after Goro passed through, threw her grenade belt into the lab. Fire consumed the remaining bodies. “This is where you turn back,” she said after they retreated to a safe distance. The flames were spreading. She had to hurry.</p><p>He glared at her for daring to suggest such a thing. “Nonsense, I am coming with you.”</p><p>She resisted the urge to smirk and nudged her chin at the replica. “This was your idea. My body…you have to keep it safe.”</p><p>“V, I am not leaving you!”</p><p>She pulled him close. Their teeth clashed. The kiss was almost painful. “You are leaving <em>with</em> me. I will put an end to the past, but only you can protect the future. Once we go down there won’t be time for a proper extraction. Reinforcements will corner us in Mikoshi, but if I’m alone, I can escape with Soulkiller.” She tapped her temple. “I’m an engram, remember?”</p><p>Goro shook from the tension in his body. He was fighting the idea with every fibre of his being. He had to have known she was right. Militech already cleared the way to the basement. If he chose to stay he would only hinder her escape. Even if by some miracle they both made it out alive, without the body, she would die.</p><p>“Promise,” he grunted through clenched teeth.</p><p> “I’ll return to you, I promise.” She smiled at that. “Never forget I love you. Now keep me safe.”</p><p>With a heavy nod, he sprinted toward the exit. He paused at the threshold. Under the haze of smoke, he turned to her. There was heat to his gaze, as if he was burning her face into his mind for the final time.</p><p>“Go!” she yelled. Unspoken was the possibility that this might be the last time they see each other.</p><p>Survive, Goro. If she doesn’t make it…</p><p>
  <em>Survive.</em>
</p><p>He squeezed his eyes shut, and after another pause, ran from the building. He cradled the replica close to his chest, shielding it from the flames and bullets. As soon as he was gone she doubled back. Beyond the fire lay the stairwell to the basement. Her boots clanked against the treads. Bodies leaned against the railings, some Militech, others Arasaka. She did not flinch as she stepped over them.</p><p>The basement was colder than she imagined. There was a distinct shift in temperature, at least five degrees lower. It was to prevent the machines from overheating. More bodies filled the hall below ground, smaller pieces too. The majority were slashed apart. A thick film of blood coated the walls, tar black under the emergency lights. Her whole squad was here. She tore her eyes from their pained faces.</p><p>Mikoshi rested at the end of the hall. As she pushed forth she passed the data fortress. The door was open with no one inside. She resisted the urge to enter. Some knowledge was better left buried. She met no resistance at the final gate. They slid open like they had been waiting for her.</p><p>It was dark inside the vault. Only the coolant pool radiated a brisk blue glow. Titanium claws drooped from the centre of the ceiling. They pinched a red cylinder, suspending it in mid-air. It was the beating heart of Mikoshi, its central access point.</p><p>The room detected her presence. A platform appeared beneath the access point, merging with the bridge that spanned the length of the pool. Luminance from the cylinder overwhelmed the sheen of the bridge. Its dull surface reflected a sinister red, like the path of damnation toward a purgatory of trapped souls.</p><p>She placed one foot onto the bridge and froze. What she felt next was not superstition, but a terrible jolt that nipped her heart and mind. She hadn’t seen it coming. Nonetheless she rolled to the side.</p><p>“Fuck!” She crashed below the bridge, narrowly missing the katana that freed her would be head.</p><p>“You killed her…demon!”</p><p>The impact knocked the wind from her. She bit back her cough and jerked her head upward. She recognised that voice. The man that appeared atop the bridge sneered as their eyes met. Gore soaked his Arasaka fatigues. Strands of black hair stuck to his cheek, wet with unknown liquids. All of his cyberware was offline, with not just the failsafe triggered, but the wiring slashed and unable to function. In his hand was a black katana.</p><p><em>Oda</em>.</p><p>How could this be, wasn’t he in Kanagawa? Then it hit her. Kanagawa was only a few hours away. If he had jumped on an AV as soon as Hanako flatlined, he had enough time to get here.</p><p>“Look, Oda, I know how you fe—”</p><p>“And Takemura, you have corrupted him, tainted him!” His ice blue optics burned bright in the darkness, but his eyes, the part that was human was pink with exhaustion. “You took everything from me…” He lifted Jinchu-Maru. Blood dripped from the tip of the blade. “You should have killed me, the night of the parade!”</p><p>He jumped from the bridge. Jinchu-Maru gleamed with its master’s fury. It came down in a clean arc, severing the cables that had been beneath her. She fell into the pool. Oda jumped in after her. She waded through the coolant, unable to stand. He was fast, even without Sandivestan he closed in on her quickly. Finally climbing to her feet, she turned around and fired. The bullets hit him square on the chest but he did not flinch. He swung Jinchu-Maru over his head and bought it down upon her. Out of instinct, she raised Widow Maker. It met Jinchu-Maru half way. The blade near cleaved the barrel in half. Her beloved rifle was dead.</p><p>There was no time for sentiment. Oda swung again. He was a little wide, leaving himself open. She struck him in the face with the butt of her rifle. Widow Maker slipped from her hands, sinking to the bottom of the pool. She had no way to retrieve it. Oda quickly recovered. Every swing was positioned to kill, but she couldn’t let him. She had made a promise. She must escape alive.</p><p>She scanned the perimeter of the pool. There was nothing for her to use. Widow Maker was gone. Dead chrome was impervious against quickhacks. She had detonated all of her grenades. The mono-wire in her wrist was her last line of defence. Could that pierce his armour? The corner of her eyes caught a spark in the darkness. It came from a broken cable. Oda had severed them. One end of the cable dangled just above the coolant. If she could somehow get it into the pool…</p><p>She traced the cable to its origin. It was a thermal regulator. She beelined for it. Oda was beginning to show fatigue. The dead chrome weighed him down, but the window it afforded her was not big enough for her to climb out. She had to act quickly. Her body used up more air then it inhaled. If this kept going Oda wouldn’t need to catch up. She’d slip in the coolant and drown.</p><p>When she waded past the cables she steeled her will and threw herself at the edge of the pool. Oda leapt forth. Just as he swung the blade down she twisted to the side. Jinchu-maru ghosted past her torso, landing on her left calf. It severed her foot. She screamed, but not before drawing her mono-wire. The wire sailed past his head in a golden crescent, striking the ground behind him.</p><p>“You missed.” Oda panted.</p><p>“Who said I was aiming for you?” With a final kick her remaining leg was out of the pool. Her long awaited daemon unleashed its fury. The thermal regulator was engulfed by a spectacular flurry of sparks. Electricity coursed through the cable and into the pool. Oda froze. His limbs convulsed rapidly, sending spurts of coolant flying.</p><p>“Take a look around you!” she yelled over the mayhem. She hadn’t intended to raise her voice; it would be wise to conserve energy, but with every deprived breath her words grew louder. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The clones, the abominations, the trapped souls! And you turn a blind eye! Do you know how many lives they’ve destroyed?”</p><p>She had wanted to knock some sense into him even before their night out, but she knew better than to think she was special. For men like Oda, loyalty was all that mattered. She was tired of arguing.</p><p>“This is the last thing I’m ever doing for you!” She cut the power. The thermal regulator sputtered pathetically, and with one last spark, burst into flames.</p><p>At the edge of the pool, Oda stood proud. Blood seeped from where his teeth had caught his lips. For a moment she thought she had miscalculated his limit, then he fell to his knees.</p><p>With a grunt, she flipped herself over. The access point was an ominous beacon. She had landed close to the start of the bridge. She flung one hand over her head and clawed back, kicking her intact foot along. The stump of her calf drew a crimson trail behind her. Blood lessened the friction.</p><p>Her chest slid along the steel panels. With every breath life fled her body.</p><p>Come on… She flung the other hand forth. Almost…there…</p><p>She didn’t know how long she spent crawling along that bridge. She looked up when she couldn’t feel her remaining leg. The access point was just above her. She pulled the cord from the panel. Her fingers were wet and it slipped from her grasp. She tried again, this time yanking it out with her fist. She jacked in using her neck port.</p><p>Mikoshi was a digital fortress enclosed from the world. Not even the Arasaka private network had access. The progress bar for Mass Liberator climbed ever so slowly. She watched the numbers flicker.</p><p>3%...</p><p>12%...</p><p>38%...</p><p>74%...</p><p>99%...</p><p>A sea of data scrolled past her optics, data she could no longer process. She let her instincts guide her. Now in place of coolant she waded through information. The source code of Mikoshi enveloped her, but it could not assimilate her. In cyberspace her mind was strong. Mikoshi morphed to the shape it took in her imagination. She was suspended in a cylindrical vault, surrounded by rings of lightless cells. Within each cell was a trivial cluster of code, uniform in their individuality. The ghostly forms writhed against equally ghostly bounds. The hole in her mind, the place that had once been <em>us</em> whispered aloud.</p><p>
  <em>V.</em>
</p><p>She gasped. <em>Johnny.</em></p><p>There he was, no, a copy of him, in the cell closest to her. Had he always been there? Or had her imaginings of Mikoshi rearranged the order? It mattered not. With a net tearing smite she shattered his confines.</p><p>
  <em>Go! You are free.</em>
</p><p>She circled the vault, freeing the hordes of trapped souls. Some of them attacked the vault, slipping through the cracks and into the dark net. Others followed behind her. At the top of Mikoshi was a single room. Inside rested a copy of Saburo, Hanako, and the other Arasakas she had not met in person. Despite having no form to feel with she could smell their fear. Their minds were no match for hers, but she did nothing. She remained still as the hoard of tormented souls dashed past her. She would let them do the honours.</p><p>The room crumpled apart. The Arasakas let out one final wail before the hoard tore them to pieces.</p><p>
  <em>We made it, Jack. Fucking major leagues.</em>
</p><p>When she returned to her body she was caught off guard by its weight. She could not lift a finger. Deafening sirens blared in the basement. Her vision was failing. She rested her head under the red glow of Mikoshi.</p><p>INITIATING SOULKILLER SEQUENCE.</p><p>There was the splash of water, then something heavy landing on the bridge. Her body was too tattered to turn. With an anguished cry, a black blade pierced her heart, nailing her to the access point.</p><p>But it was too late.</p><p>She was one with the net.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“The Hanged Man is the card of sacrifice. It says that a price must be paid in order to achieve enlightenment. The Hanged Man’s forsakenness opens the path for rebirth into a new life, though this path is wrought with pain suspended in time and ultimately ends in death.” - excerpt from the Tarot Card Journal </p><p>The next update will come on the 23rd of May.</p><p>Tumblr: <a href="https://ivivao3.tumblr.com/">ivivao3.tumblr.com</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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